


The Starry Crown

by bedlamsbard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2020-05-13 23:54:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 34,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19261744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bedlamsbard/pseuds/bedlamsbard
Summary: Months after Ezra Bridger vanished into the depths of the mysterious Jedi temple on Lothal, he reappears -- with Kanan Jarrus in tow.  All Hera Syndulla and the other surviving members of theGhostcrew want is to retrieve their missing teammates, but a Jedi who can raise the dead is a prize too great for the Empire to pass up.  Palpatine will do anything to get Ezra and the secrets he carries -- secrets that may allow the Emperor to control reality itself.





	1. Flares

Hera tried not to waste too much time feeling sorry for herself, but after four months – nearly five – of feeling increasingly like a nuna cornered by a pack of angry gutkurrs it was hard not to.

Even in the thin, too-hazy light of early dawn smoke smudged a dark line across the horizon, marking the nearest point of the mining guild’s progress across the planet. Hera estimated the distance by eye as she crept out of the caves where the other members of the rebel cell were sleeping, wondering if it was close enough that they would have to do something about it. She put the thought aside for some later time, wanting these few minutes for herself and the Empire be damned.

Only a few other beings were moving around the camp at this hour, early risers like herself or the remains of the night watch. The woman nearest her turned politely aside to give Hera the illusion of privacy, pretending that she hadn’t seen her general. Hera felt a trickle of gratitude for the gesture as she went to the furthest edge of the cliffs and sank down onto a rock, pressing a hand to the faintly rounded curve of her belly as she did so. _Stupid_ , she thought to herself, contemplating the line of smoke and what it implied. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_ – but there was nothing she could do about anything now except try to get her people through it alive as best she could. If she could save Lothal at the same time, so much the better, but increasingly that possibility felt as unlikely as all of them living out the next year.

They hadn’t even seen a Loth-wolf in weeks. Hera half-wondered sometimes if it had all been a dream, if she would wake up and find herself back in the villa on Ryloth, a child with no conception of the galaxy’s true evil and her whole life laid out in front of her. These days she thought that might be preferable.

The haze only deepened as the sun continued to climb. The Empire was consuming the planet, destroying the grasslands in its relentless hunt for resources; Hera knew that it was only a matter of time until they reached the ruins where the rebels had made their camp. It was a small miracle that they hadn’t found it already.

Kanan would have called it the will of the Force, probably.

Behind her, the rest of the camp was waking up. Hera tightened her shoulders and didn’t turn around, wanting to wait until the last possible moment before she had to go back and pretend again that she had any idea how to get them all through this alive. She had already failed at that several times over; she couldn’t see how any of them still believed it of her now.

Wheels crunched across the rocky soil as Chopper came up behind her, along with footsteps that Hera identified as Sabine and Zeb. Hera sighed, trying to drag her mind back to the present, to a plan, to something that might do more than harry the Empire for a few lost credits or hours.

“Hera?” Sabine said, her voice uneasy.

Hera braced her shoulders and turned around, trying to make herself smile. The expression, half-formed, froze on her face at the sight of Sabine’s nervous look. She was holding a datapad to her chest; Zeb had one hand on her shoulder, gripping her hard enough that his claws were scoring lines through the faded paint on her armor.

“What is it?” Hera asked.

“I –” Sabine licked her lips, glanced at Chopper, and then looked at Hera again. “Do you remember the Imperial spy satellite I sliced into a while back? So we could keep an eye on the – on the temple up near the pole?”

Hera nodded. Their attempt to sabotage the dig site hadn’t done more than slow the Empire down for a few days; after that, the archaeological work on the site had only intensified, as had the guard on it. They hadn’t been able to get near it again.

Sabine swallowed, started to hold out the datapad, and then seemed to change her mind. “Chop?” she said.

Chopper warbled softly, sounding as confused and concerned as Hera had ever heard him, then activated his holoprojector. The image was grainy, but it was clearly the Jedi temple, or rather what was left of it; the Imperials had sliced off the top and part of the sides, leaving the interior exposed in a way that made Hera feel slightly uneasy, like she was seeing something that no one other than a Jedi was ever meant to see. The murals of the three figures and the circle of Loth-wolves had remained relatively untouched, which surprised Hera; she had thought that those would be the first parts of the Temple to be removed once the Imperials realized their importance.

“This was about half an hour ago,” Sabine said, her voice tight.

Hera glanced up at her, confused by her tone, then movement in the hologram caught her attention. She was looking for stormtroopers or archaeological workers, living beings, before she realized that it was the Loth-wolves on the temple. They had started running again.

She wasn’t the only person who had noticed. Stormtroopers and civilian workers, already awake despite the early hour, were moving towards the temple, bursting into view on the edges of the hologram.

Hera bit her lip. This wasn’t unmeaningful, of course, but it wasn’t like they could –

The stone inside the circle of running Loth-wolves rippled.

As if in response, Hera thought she felt the child inside her shift; she hadn’t even realized that she had one hand over her belly, as if comforting it or protecting it. Sabine was gripping her datapad with white-knuckled intensity; Zeb’s ears had gone flat, his free hand clenched into a fist.

The stone rippled again, and spat out two figures.

They hit the ground hard enough to make Hera wince, lying there still as the dead before the smaller one began to pick himself up. He turned towards the other figure, who was pushing himself upright with fisted hands against the rocky ground, just before the stormtroopers arrived with Minister Hydan right behind them. Under the stormtroopers’ blasters, the two figures rose to their knees, their hands held up over their heads. One trooper snatched the lightsaber from the smaller figure’s belt, while another removed the blaster from the other’s holster; then their arms were roughly jerked behind their backs and cuffed. They were dragged to their feet and marched into one of the mobile building units, out of sight.

The Loth-wolves, Hera observed with a distinct feeling of unreality, had run back to their original positions on the main mural. No one seemed to have noticed their departure.

The hologram blinked out of sight.

She didn’t realize that she was sitting there with one hand on her belly and one hand over her mouth until Chopper rolled up to her and put one of his manipulators on her knee, making an earnest, frightened sound.

Zeb said, “Hera?”

She opened her mouth, not knowing what she meant to say, but no words came out.

Sabine said, “They’ll – they’ll be moving them to Capital City. They have to. We have to – before they’re transferred off-planet. Thrawn won’t let them be held here. Well, he might as a trap, but –”

“No,” Hera said. “No, it won’t be Thrawn. It will be the Emperor. And Thrawn’s off-planet now anyway.” She made herself take a shaky breath, then another, not wanting to touch the sudden surge of hope that had risen up inside her. She didn’t want it to be real. Or she did, but – she didn’t want it to be snatched away again. She might be dreaming.

“I’ll get the speeders,” Zeb said. He eyed Hera for a moment, then apparently decided against asking her anything else, like how she was feeling or if she was up for this, and left, long legs making short work of the ground between them and the cave where the speeder bikes were stored.

“We’ll get them,” Sabine promised Hera, her own voice as shaky as Hera felt. “I don’t know how, or what – I mean, it’s Ezra, I never know what he’s doing, but –” She paused, as if she had just realized that for the first time in months she had used the present tense instead of the past. “It’s Ezra and Kanan,” she said. “We’ll get them.”

“We have to,” Hera said, because she had absolutely no idea what she would do if they didn’t and the Emperor won after all.

* * *

Ryder came up to them as they were packing the speeder bikes in preparation for their departure. The camp couldn’t spare much in the way of supplies – couldn’t spare the speeder bikes, in truth – but Capital City was far enough away that they couldn’t just leave without taking any kind of provisions. Hera was watching Sabine and Zeb strap Chopper to the back of Sabine’s bike when she heard Ryder’s uneven step behind her, his bad leg dragging a little and his crutch ticking softly against the rocky soil. He needed a real doctor, or at the very least a medical droid. There wasn’t one to be found anywhere nearer than Kothal, and of course going there was entirely out of the question.

“Hera,” he began.

She turned towards him. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“Then you know that this is a bad idea,” Ryder said.

“Just about everything we’ve been doing is a bad idea, Ryder,” Hera pointed out. “Those are my people out there. I can’t just let the Empire have them.”

“I’m not suggesting you do,” Ryder said. “Assuming this isn’t some kind of trap, that is. But _you_ shouldn’t be the one to go. In your condition –”

Hera put a hand unconsciously over her belly, which even after all these months was only barely rounded, almost unnoticeable except to a careful observer. “That’s why I have to go,” she said. “If there’s any chance – any at all – that this child can grow up with a father, then I have to take it. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t. And Ezra – I have to go, Ryder. I can’t leave it to anyone else.”

“They were my friends too,” he said. “I understand that, I do. But if the Empire catches you –”

“We live with that threat every day,” Hera said. “This is no different.” She met Ryder’s eyes and added quietly, “And they did it for me. I owe them no less.”

He nodded reluctantly. “And if you don’t come back?”

“Don’t come after us,” Hera said firmly. “This was your rebellion before it was mine. You know what to do.”

“Hera?” Sabine called. “We’re ready.”

Ryder stepped back, his expression still reluctant. “Good luck,” he said. “And may the Force be with you.”

“Thanks,” Hera replied. “We’ll probably need it.”

She nodded gravely to him and went to join Zeb and Sabine with the bikes. She was aware of other members of Ryder’s rebel cell coming out of the caves to watch them, Mart clearly considering trying to join them before Ryder closed a hand over his shoulder.

For a moment Sabine looked like she was going to say something, biting her lip, but then she just shook her head and pulled her helmet on. The three of them mounted their speeder bikes, Hera reflexively checking the fuel and wishing that they had more of it. It was enough to get them to Capital City, even if they had to do a little maneuvering along the way. They would have to steal more in the city, which Hera suspected wouldn’t be as easy as it had been two years ago.

They left the camp without looking back.

* * *

“And I thought Sundari was bad.”

Sabine kept her voice low, knowing that Zeb with his sensitive Lasat ears would hear it; he flicked one of them in acknowledgment of the words but didn’t respond, since his deeper voice would travel further than hers. Hera, crouched a little ways away with Chopper behind the scant cover of a partially destroyed wall, didn’t look around.

Sabine had seen warzones that were less of a mess than Capital City, or at least the neighborhood they had hidden the bikes in. The Empire was in the process of razing entire neighborhoods, forcing the city’s remaining population into a few tightly cordoned off zones that were, in theory, easier to control. It wasn’t going as well as Governor Pryce was probably hoping, since Sabine could hear the distant rattle of blasterfire coming from a few miles away, in one of the other forbidden zones. They had had a little contact with the rebels in Capital City, but the scattered groups here were mostly homegrown, forced to their current circumstances by the Empire’s final crackdown. Some members of Ryder’s cell were openly disdainful of them, seeing them as collaborators who had been only too content to go along with the Empire until things finally got hard for them. Sabine, who had seen a lot of different rebel groups over the past five years, wasn’t willing to go that far, but she could have wished that they had found their principles a little earlier.

It probably wouldn’t have made any difference. If Mandalore had fallen to the Empire, then this backrocket world full of farmers, miners, and shopkeepers hadn’t stood a chance.

Sabine tightened her fingers around the grip of her blaster as a four-man stormtrooper squad appeared at the opposite end of the street. Beside her, Zeb sank lower down to the ground, his ears flattening as if he was trying to avoid them being seen. He had his bo-rifle in his hands, holding it so that he could either bring it up and fire or reconfigure it to its staff formation in the same heartbeat. Sabine didn’t glance in Hera’s direction, wary of even that slight motion somehow getting the attention of the stormtroopers.

The stormtroopers paused briefly, glancing down the street, then moved on. Sabine let her shoulders relax slightly, turning her head to catch Hera’s eye. She held up a hand, counting silently down until a full minute had passed, then made a “go on” gesture. Hera straightened slightly, moving swiftly down the street in the direction the stormtroopers had come from. Chopper rolled along behind her, his passage on the uneven ground loud enough to make Sabine wince. Zeb followed, Sabine bringing up the rear and keeping an eye out for either stormtroopers, rebels, or civilians.

They had to pause four more times before they finally reached the edge of the inhabited zone. By now it was almost full dark, the remaining twilit gloom casting long shadows across the deserted streets; it had taken them nearly the entire day to reach Capital City from the caves. Sabine had checked the spy satellite several times since then and had been gratified – after a manner of speaking – to find that her guess was correct and that there was a convoy on its way from the temple to Capital City. She had been afraid that Minister Hydan and Governor Pryce was going to have them transported via shuttle, but the odd dampening effect that kept air- and spacecraft from approaching the temple still seemed to be active. Ground vehicles sometimes had trouble too, but nowhere near the extent that more sophisticated craft did. Sabine figured it was even odds that it was some kind of Force distortion that no one but a Jedi could understand or that the Empire had managed to activate an ancient defense mechanism. She was sincerely hoping it was the latter, just because it was easier to get her head around. Either way, it meant that it would take the Empire longer to get here than it had taken them, since the caves were closer to Capital City than the temple. Sabine just hoped that they had managed it in time.

_And that this isn’t some kind of weird trap, of course._

She was pretty sure it wasn’t, if only because it was just too blasted weird for any of the Imperial officials on Lothal to come up with on their own. The Grand Inquisitor, maybe. Maul would have done it. But both of them were out of the picture, and it didn’t fit what she knew of Grand Admiral Thrawn, even if he hadn’t been offworld at the moment. It definitely wasn’t Hydan’s or Pryce’s style.

The inhabited zone was just as deserted as the uninhabited zone had been, though at least the majority of the buildings weren’t in ruins. Lights in the windows showed that there were still people alive and living here, which did a little to ease Sabine’s sense of dislocation. Even though she had been in Capital City dozens of times during the period they had operated on Lothal, it was still hard to reconcile this with the city she had known only a few years ago.

Once they passed a cordoned-off alley, within which the remains of an X-wing were still clearly visible, though the ship had clearly been stripped for parts. Hera glanced at it and winced, but didn’t say anything.

Still clearly visible was the gaping hole in the skyline where the fuel depot had been. Sabine licked her lips, half-convinced for an instant she could smell smoke and burning fuel, but it was impossible. That had been months ago. And her helmet would have filtered it out if it had been there, anyway.

They had to stop at frequent intervals to avoid stormtrooper patrols. That might have been easier if they had taken to the rooftops, but with gunships overflying the city at regular intervals being spotted from the air was more of a risk than encountering the patrols. The slowness of their passage made the back of Sabine’s neck itch; if the convoy reached the Imperial Complex before they did –

_Is Pryce going to keep them here until Thrawn comes back? Does Pryce even know?_ Sabine knew that Pryce had faced some kind of backlash for the destruction of the fuel depot and the subsequent halt to Thrawn’s TIE Defender program, but she hadn’t been removed from the governorship of the planet. Ever since then she had been persecuting Lothal with an iron hand, bent on bringing Lothal to heel and thus redeeming herself. What they hadn’t been able to find out was if Pryce had ever been read into what was going on with the Jedi temple at the pole; the spy satellite had never picked her up there, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t gotten reports. But the temple was the Emperor’s pet project. They wouldn’t keep any prisoners associated with it on Lothal for longer than they had to.

They just had to get to the Imperial Complex as soon as possible. That was the important thing right now.

By the time they reached it, it was pitch black out and Sabine had her helmet’s night vision activated. Hera, being a Twi’lek, could see in the dark; Zeb could too, if not as well as Hera. Chopper kept his light off and stuck close to Hera. None of the city streetlights were active – Sabine knew that the Empire had a harshly-enforced curfew on – and only one of the moons was a bare sliver in the already overcast sky, the other dark for the next few days. Sabine was hoping that the patrolling stormtroopers kept tripping over their own feet.

Only the Imperial Complex was still lit up, though many of the windows inside the dome were dark at this hour. All the buildings surrounding it had been cleared away, leaving an empty zone that was manned by stormtrooper patrols and a couple of AT-DPs. Carbon scoring on the pavement showed where there had been some kind of action recently enough that the rain hadn’t washed it away yet.

Sabine caught Hera’s eye and gestured at the nearest building, which was clearly marked with the Imperial symbols that meant it was empty and entrance was forbidden. Zeb broke a window for them so that they didn’t have to tamper with the seal on the door and they all shimmied inside, Zeb manhandling Chopper through it until Sabine could catch him and lower him to the floor, then following with grunted effort; he almost didn’t fit.

This had been some sort of office building by the looks of it. Sabine wondered briefly what had happened to its occupants, then put the thought out of her mind. She and the others made their way silently up the deserted stairwells to the uppermost floor, lining up alongside the windows that faced the Imperial Complex. Sabine would have liked to go all the way up to the roof, but with those gunships she just couldn’t risk it.

They observed the kill zone between the buildings and the wall around the Imperial Complex for a few minutes, Sabine constantly checking the convoy’s position on her datapad. It was passing out of range of the satellite, but she was pretty sure she could predict its route through the city and when it would arrive. It wasn’t long now.

“Got any ideas?” Zeb muttered eventually, keeping his voice low.

“Yeah, all of them bad.” Sabine showed the datapad and her predicted path for the convoy to Hera – she didn’t want to activate the holoprojector on her gauntlets in case the glow showed through the window. “We can’t hit them here. We need to hit them in the city, before they reach the Imperial Complex. Once they’re inside, we’re out of options.”

Well, not completely out of options, but at that point their options went from “bad” to “really bad,” and this time they didn’t have any handy Jedi around to even the odds.

Hera took the datapad from her, studying the map of the city. “The Empire has cleared most of these streets,” she said. “There’s not a lot of cover.”

“There’s not a lot of _us_ ,” Zeb pointed out. “We don’t need that much.”

“Yeah, but we need to stop the convoy,” Sabine said. “If we can separate half of them from the other half – and I’m not sure which transport they’ve got –” She still didn’t want to say the names, just in case she was wrong after all. She didn’t think she could bear it if she was. “Which transport they’re using,” she finished awkwardly. There were four in the convoy. It had to be one of the two middle ones, but she wasn’t sure which.

Hera indicated something on the city map. “What about here?” she suggested. “This is a choke point. If we can block the road somehow they won’t be able to get around without going back. Depending how we do it, it won’t last long, but we don’t need it to last long.”

“Block it how?” Zeb said, frowning at the map. “You want to bring down a building?” He looked hopefully at Sabine.

Sabine shook her head. “I don’t have enough explosives for that.” She opened her bag to look just in case, even though she already knew that she was down to her last dozen explosives, then checked the power levels on her jetpack. “I’ve got one missile left.” She considered the map, then said, “I have an idea.”

* * *

The convoy came rolling up right as expected and along the predicted route. Sabine let out a low sigh of relief. She didn’t bother to look at Zeb or Hera, since she doubted they had moved from their positions since they had all settled in to wait about half an hour ago. They knew what they were doing. They knew what the stakes were.

It was a convoy of four transports, with escorted by half a dozen scout troopers on speeder bikes. Sabine watched them proceed down the narrow road in front of her; the buildings had been mostly destroyed some time ago, but the foundations were still there, along with most of the rubble from the demolitions. It wasn’t exactly a lot of cover, but it was more than enough to hide three people and a droid, and there was enough of it to make sure that the transports couldn’t veer off the road.

Sabine counted silently in her head as the speeder bikes and the first transport passed by her hiding spot. Just as the speeder bikes turned left at the intersection, she triggered the explosive device she had planted earlier.

It detonated directly beneath the transport, sending the vehicle bucking upwards before it landed awkwardly on its side, forcing the transports behind it to come to sharp halt. At the opposite end of the convoy another explosive went off, repeating the process with the rear transport. Sabine rose from her crouch and flicked her wrists, sending smoke grenades flying into the road to add to the confusion. As they detonated, destroying the visibility created by the lights on the transports, Sabine vaulted the remaining half-wall in front of her and drew her blasters, shooting the first stormtrooper she saw in the chest. She flung herself at the nearest transport, aware of the sound of blasterfire around her – the distinctive _crack_ of Zeb’s bo-rifle, the slightly lighter retort of Hera’s Blurrg-1120, the familiar rattle of stomtrooper E-11s.

Since she had her helmet on, the smoke didn’t bother her at all. Stormtrooper helmets didn’t compensate as well as Mandalorian ones, and she shot two more stormtroopers on her way to the transport, both of them firing blindly and likely in more danger of hitting their friends than hitting hers. Sabine reached the transport and put her shoulder against the hull so she had protection on one side, probably scraping more paint off that pauldron in the process – with any luck they’d get this over with quickly and she could rob an art supply store on their way out of town.

The hatch slid open before she could reach for the control, a stormtrooper kneeling in the entrance with his blaster pointed into the gloom. Sabine shot him at point-blank range, then had to duck back as another trooper standing behind him opened fire. Sabine shot him too, then had to drag the bodies out of the way before she could clamber into the transport.

“Hey!” said one of the drivers, swinging around towards her and scrambling for a weapon. Sabine shot him before he could grab it, then spun and activated the shield on her gauntlets just in time to knock aside a shot from a stormtrooper who had been in the back of the vehicle. She fired over her shield, hitting him in the throat, and didn’t wait to watch him fall before she turned back to shoot the second driver.

A muffled sound from the back of the vehicle sent her spinning back around, her blasters raised, but it was only the being locked into one of the prisoner racks, his hands cuffed to the frame holding him in place and a bag over his head. There was only one prisoner.

Sabine fought down her sudden nerves and crossed the transport, pausing by the body of the stormtrooper when she spotted a familiar cylinder clipped to his belt. She crouched down and retrieved Ezra’s lightsaber, then straightened back up. She hesitated for a moment that she didn’t have before she grabbed the bag and pulled it off.

Ezra Bridger glared up at her, wide-eyed behind the gag stuffed into his mouth as he recognized her. He made another muffled sound that might have been her name; Sabine holstered one of her blasters so that she could pull the gag out.

“Took you long enough,” she said, since it was the first thing that came to mind. “You’re late.”

“Get me out of here!”

She activated his lightsaber to slice through the locking frame and cuffs. Ezra stumbled upright, staring at her like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His hair had grown out again; there was a fresh bruise on his face and an older one on his temple. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and in the dim light of the transport Sabine could see an unfamiliar pattern of white scars covering his palms and tracing their way up his wrists before vanishing beneath his shirt cuffs.

To cover her confusion, Sabine deactivated the lightsaber and thrust it at him. “This is yours,” she said, and then, because she had to know, “Where’s –”

“Other transport. They split us up.” He shoved past her towards the hatch, igniting his lightsaber as he leapt down onto the broken pavement and promptly tripped over a body. Sabine followed him out, drawing both blasters again.

She activated her comlink to say, “I’ve got Spectre Six. We’re headed for the third transport.”

_“Why?”_ Zeb demanded.

Sabine didn’t have a chance to respond, turning to lay down covering fire as Ezra put his head down and sprinted for the other transport, which had stopped further down the street and was now encircled by stormtroopers and the surviving scout troopers. As Sabine ran after him, one of the scout troopers reeled backwards and collapsed, a smoking hole in his chest courtesy of either Zeb or Hera.

Ezra tore through the nearest stormtroopers without hesitation, his lightsaber flashing in the slowly dissipating smoke. Sabine caught up with him as he reached the hatch, the door sliding open without prompting.

“Kanan!” Ezra yelled, obviously about to clamber inside –

Then a familiar grayish form slammed into his chest, knocking him to the ground. Ezra thrust a hand up, sending the Noghri flying backwards; Rukh caught himself on the side of the transport and dropped to the pavement, his fighting sticks suddenly in his hands. Ezra flipped back to his feet, his face fixed in a snarl.

“Hey!” Sabine shouted, firing even though she knew Rukh would dodge the shots. He spun towards her; Ezra dodged past him, lunging for the entrance to the transport. Before he could reach it, a second Noghri appeared in the hatch, a staff weapon cracking across Ezra’s face and sending him stumbling backwards. Sabine fired rapidly to no effect, before scrambling in her pouches for another grenade and flinging it at the transport.

_I hope they didn’t stint on the armor plating_ , she thought, then it exploded next to the strange Noghri’s head. Ezra flung himself at the hatch again, getting most of the way inside before Rukh grabbed him from behind, sending Ezra’s lightsaber flying out of his hand. Sabine fired; Rukh jerked Ezra around to put his body between himself and Sabine, his arm tightening around Ezra’s neck as Ezra scrabbled at it with his scarred fingers.

Teeth bared in a rictus of concentration, Ezra stretched out the hand not clamped on Rukh’s arm in the direction of the transport and made a sharp jerking motion.

The moment of inattention cost him. Rukh jammed the end of one of his fighting sticks into Ezra’s belly, making him double over as he released his grip on the Noghri. Rukh shoved him down, raising one of his sticks high –

Desperate, Sabine activated the electrowhip on her gauntlet and sent it snapping out. Rukh jerked aside, so that rather than snatching the weapon out of his hand the whip instead opened a sharp line across the back of his wrist. He grabbed the end of the electrowhip before Sabine could draw it back for another try and jerked, knocking her off her feet. She hit the ground and slid a few paces before she was able to deactivate the whip, rolling back to her feet and already swinging a punch at the Noghri.

Rukh dodged it easily, grabbing her wrist with a grip like durasteel. He threw her like she was trash; Sabine hit the side of the transport hard enough to make her head ring. _Oh, that’s going to leave a dent_ – she thought dizzily, trying to pick herself up and failing. She was sick of hammering dents out of her armor.

Ezra was pushing himself upright, or trying to, scrabbling for his lightsaber amongst the broken slabs of pavement. Rukh kicked the weapon out of his reach and snapped his fighting sticks together to form his familiar and hated electrostaff, raising it over his head to deliver a final knockout blow.

Sabine tried to bring her blasters up, but her head was ringing and she couldn’t make her eyes focus. She was as likely to shoot Ezra as she was Rukh. _Zeb, this would be a really good time to_ –

Rukh tried to bring the staff down, and couldn’t.

His gray face was a study in confusion, his fingers flexing along the length of the staff. Sabine blinked, startled, then turned her head to see Kanan leaping down from the transport’s hatch, one hand outstretched.

Sabine stared. She hadn’t thought that it wasn’t true, she just…hadn’t believed that it could be true. But it was Kanan. It was Kanan as she had seen him last, down to closely-cropped hair and clean-shaven face, his scarred eyes closed in concentration. The only indication that something might – _might_ – have happened to him were the scorch marks on his boots, and that could as easily have been shadow rather than real damage.

“Kanan?” she whispered. _I hope Hera is seeing this._

He turned his head a little in response to her voice, but didn’t take his attention off Rukh. He made a sweeping motion with his hand and the staff went flying sideways; Rukh released it rather than get taken along with it. Kanan’s eyes snapped open, white and unseeing, but he was moving even as Rukh flung himself at him, stepping on Ezra in the process.

“This is a weird day,” Sabine muttered under her breath, and stumbled forward away from the transport to help Ezra up. His lightsaber came rattling across the pavement into his hand as she reached him, his face bloodied where the other Noghri had struck him. Belatedly, Sabine realized what he must have done. He’d used the Force to unlock Kanan from his restraints.

“Oh, I hope you have a good explanation for this,” Sabine told him, pulling his arm across her shoulders so that she could help him stagger to his feet.

“Good’s probably relative,” he said, his gaze tracking Kanan and Rukh. “You haven’t killed this guy yet?”

“Long story.” She triggered her comlink. “Spectre Two, Spectre Four, we could use a little help over here!”

_“On our way.”_ From the calm sound of Hera’s voice, Sabine was betting she hadn’t spotted Kanan yet. Maybe that was a good thing.

_That better be him_ , she thought, but didn’t voice it. Ezra was clearly of the opinion it was; since Sabine had no idea what he had done, she knew there was no way to argue around it, and she didn’t want to. Kanan was her friend too. She wanted him back.

She fired at an approaching stormtrooper with the blaster she was still holding, trying to regain her awareness of everything going on around her. Most of the smoke had dissipated, and the street was illuminated by the lights on the transports. Bodies – all troopers, she was relieved to see – were scattered around, the remaining stormtroopers all staying well back from Kanan and Rukh. A flash of motion made her jerk her blaster up again, but it was just Zeb, pelting over the broken pavement with his bo-rifle now in its staff configuration, sweeping aside stormtroopers as he encountered them. Hera was just behind him, Chopper following her. That was promising. If they could hotwire one of the transports –

Sabine saw the exact moment that Hera recognized Kanan. She stopped so abruptly that Chopper ran into the backs of her legs, her lips shaping his name; even from here Sabine could tell that she, like Sabine, hadn’t quite been willing to believe that it was really true. That he was really here. Then she pelted forward past Zeb, ignoring his cry of surprise, and screamed, “ _Kanan!_ ”

His head jerked around in response to her voice, distracted for the instant it took for Rukh to land a blow on him. Kanan staggered backward and Hera screamed again, wordless this time. Sabine raised her blaster, trying to get her vision to focus long enough that she could be relatively certain of hitting Rukh rather than Kanan – or at least not hitting Kanan, since hitting Rukh was almost impossible as it was. Her vision was still blurred, though, her head pounding where she had struck it.

Ezra slipped suddenly out from under her arm, his lightsaber igniting as he ran towards the combatants. “Ezra!” Sabine shouted, at the same time Zeb spotted him and yelled, “Kid!”

Sabine started after him, then was struck by a wave of dizziness and stumbled. Zeb and Hera reached her a moment later, Zeb steadying her. All of Hera’s attention was on Kanan, her eyes wide with shock.

“We have to –” Sabine said, trying to make herself think straight. “Chop, can you get one of the transports running?”

He warbled in acknowledgment and rolled over to the nearest, which was the one Ezra had been held in. The one Kanan had been in still had a dent in the side where Sabine’s grenade had detonated. There was no sign of the other Noghri, but there wouldn’t be if he – she? – had still been standing there when the grenade had gone off.

Sabine braced herself against Zeb’s arm and raised her blasters again, still hoping that she could help Ezra and Kanan, but the knock to her head was giving her too much trouble to be certain of her aim. The last thing she needed to do right now was shoot either of them.

“Kanan!” Ezra got a toe beneath Rukh’s fallen staff weapon and flipped it up into the air. Kanan and Rukh both spun to catch it, but Kanan grabbed it first, a bare second before the Noghri’s hands closed around the shaft. The two men wrestled for the weapon, before Ezra reached them and Rukh had to leap aside to avoid being skewered, his gaze moving fast between one Jedi and the other.

“Karabast,” Zeb whispered, almost too low for Sabine to make out the words. “That’s really him, isn’t it? The kid did it –”

“Yeah, whatever ‘it’ is,” Sabine said, then the two of them had to dive aside as fresh blasterfire peppered the area where they had been standing. Sabine fetched up behind the crumpled remains of what had been a speeder bike, slapping the side of her helmet with one hand as though it could get her head straight. She put her head cautiously up, searching for Zeb and Hera – Chopper had at least succeeded in getting Hera over to the transport, but she hadn’t boarded yet; Sabine spotted her with her shoulder braced against a chunk of broken masonry, aiming over the top of it as she fired at an approaching stormtrooper. Zeb, nearby, was doing the same. Well, that was better than Sabine could manage at the moment.

She holstered her blasters in order to dig through her bag, identifying her pitifully small collection of remaining explosives by touch. She had to have _something_ useful in there.

Sabine risked another glanced at Kanan, Ezra, and Rukh as her fingers closed on something that, if not a magic problem-solver, at least wouldn’t be useless. For all he was unarmed, the Noghri was doing a fair job at keeping up with the two Jedi, but then again Kanan and Ezra couldn’t be functioning at full strength after almost a day in captivity. And – whatever had happened before. Ezra had been missing for months, and Kanan had been –

Anything could have happened.

She dragged her gaze away from them with an effort and straightened up long enough to depress the trigger on the explosive she was holding and throw it. It wasn’t her best throw, but it landed roughly where she wanted it to and exploded in a cloud of smoke that obscured both the combatants and the approaching stormtroopers from view.

Hera let out a cry of dismay, but Zeb took advantage of the stormtroopers’ momentary confusion to leap up from his temporary cover and barrel towards her. He dragged her up without stopping his headlong run, tucking her under his arm like a basket of fruit as he made for the transport. Chopper must have made it in, because Sabine heard the engine suddenly rumble to life again.

She drew her blasters again and followed, shooting in the general direction of the stormtroopers. She doubted the smoke would bother Ezra and Rukh at all – Kanan it definitely wouldn’t – but if it kept the stormtroopers at bay long enough for them to get the transport into a position where Kanan and Ezra could just jump on –

Hopefully Hera and Zeb had figured out that part of the plan.

She was halfway there when the sky lit up and Ezra yelled, “Sabine, _down_!”

She hit the ground hard enough to wish for padding besides her armor. TIE fighter laserfire blasted furrows into the ground close enough that she could smell the pavement melting despite her helmet; when she raised her head, it was to see that Kanan and Ezra had both dived for cover and Rukh was nowhere in sight.

Gritting her teeth, Sabine forced herself to her feet and scrambled the last few meters to the transport, where Zeb was waiting in the open hatch with his arm outstretched to pull her aboard. The TIE circled back around; Sabine glanced up to spot two more starfighters incoming, along with the familiar running lights of a gunship.

_Blast, blast, blast_ –

She almost fell out of the transport again as it suddenly moved, Hera piloting with her excellent, delicate touch, which in this case meant plowing through rubble and a couple of burning speeder bikes on her way to Kanan and Ezra. Sabine grabbed the handle just inside the hatch and leaned out again, bracing her feet against the deck to keep from falling out.

“Come on!” she shouted, and resisted the urge to look up at the sky again. She knew that the transport could take more than a few hits, as long as the TIEs didn’t get a lucky shot in. That didn’t mean she would enjoy the experience.

Ezra was dragging Kanan to his feet; Sabine could see his head bleeding where he must have struck it, and his sleeve was ripped at the shoulder. She cast a nervous look around for Rukh, but couldn’t spot him. Hopefully he was unconscious somewhere and not using his blasted personal cloaking device –

She flinched back as the TIE fighter roared past again, laserfire tearing up the pavement between the transport and the two Jedi. Sabine leaned further out of the transport, trusting Zeb to grab her if she was in danger of falling, and activated the single remaining missile in her jetpack.

It flashed upwards; the TIE pilot, not expecting it, didn’t have a chance to dodge. The starfighter exploded as the missile struck it; Sabine threw up an arm to cover her eyes, hearing the sound of debris raining down all around them, bouncing off the transport’s roof, digging furrows in the already-ruined pavement. She glanced up again to see Kanan and Ezra nearly to them, Hera swinging the transport around so that all they had to do was hop on –

Then Ezra went down.

At first Sabine thought he had tripped; there was certainly enough debris on the ground around them. But Kanan swung around, leaning back out of the way of a blow Sabine couldn’t see coming but he didn’t need to; she saw a flicker of motion with no visible source and realized what – _who_ – it had to be.

“Kriffing Noghri!” Zeb yelled, almost directly into her ear. “I thought we broke that thing!”

He nearly knocked Sabine out of the transport as Hera swung it around, now driving it directly at Kanan and his invisible opponent. Ezra was still on the ground, not moving; Sabine braced herself to jump out and grab him.

Rukh shimmered into view as he presumably realized that his cloaking device was useless against a blind man, just in time for Kanan to slam a punch into his jaw. Sabine resisted the urge to whoop. Zeb _did_ whoop, temporarily deafening her.

The transport jerked beneath them and Sabine realized as Hera shoved up beside her that it was because Chopper had taken the controls. Swearing under her breath, Sabine turned, meaning to get them – being an astromech droid, Chopper wasn’t a bad pilot, but Sabine would have preferred a sentient at the controls – but Zeb got there first, folding himself into a seat meant for a human and not a Lasat. Hera was gripping the side of the hatch with desperate strength, her gaze fixed on Kanan and her lips moving silently. It took Sabine a moment to realize that she was saying, _please, please, please_ in Twi’leki, her lekku flicking in agitation and added emphasis.

“I’ll get Ezra,” Sabine told her. She braced herself against the transport, then leapt, landing in a roll on the broken ground and jarring her head again. She scrambled to her feet, swayed for a moment as she got her bearings, and spotted Ezra’s limp body lying in the rubble a few meters away. Sabine lunged for him –

– and just as quickly was thrown back as laserfire ate up the ground between them, green beams stabbing at what remained of the pavement, creating an impenetrable wall of energy between them. She flung herself backwards as the hovering TIE turned its fire on her, hoping that her jetpack had enough power left as she shot up into the sky.

Two TIEs and a gunship had arrived, the gunship maneuvering to set down as the other TIE concentrated its fire on their transport. Sabine could see Hera bracing herself in the hatch, her mouth open as she shouted something; Sabine couldn’t make out what it was. She was guessing it was probably Kanan’s name.

She dug an explosive at random out of her bag, noting absently that she only had four left, and kept it cupped in one hand as she drew her blaster with the other, dodging around the TIE as it tried to deal with her. She could see the pilot through the viewport, his body language conveying growing frustration as he tried to target her. Even at this range, her one-handed blasterfire wasn’t having much effect on the starfighter, but Sabine hadn’t expected it to.

A warning light flashed on her gauntlet, letting her know that her jetpack was at 10% power and falling. Sabine would have to do this quickly.

She shot upwards and landed on top of the TIE, holstering her blaster as she gripped the hatch. The TIE rolled on its axis, trying to shake her off; Sabine lost her grip on the explosive but gritted her teeth and hung onto the TIE until it had more or less righted itself again, jerking frantically. She pointed one of her vambraces at the hatch control and triggered the darts, wishing she’d gone through with modding them for electric shocks the way she had intended. She didn’t exactly have a lot of darts going spare, either.

They had the intended effect and she pulled the hatch open. The pilot jerked his head upwards, the wide lenses of his helmet somehow conveying absolute horror at this invasion, just before Sabine dropped down into the cockpit and triggered a second set of darts into the most vulnerable point of his flightsuit. He sagged in his seat, the TIE already falling prey to the merciless embrace of gravity and rapidly descending towards the terrifyingly near ground.

“Karabast!” Sabine hissed, shoving his limp body out of the way so that she could grab the controls. She got the TIE leveled out only a few meters above the ground, then took aim at the gunship and fired.

The other ship shuddered under the shots, but held, and Sabine swore under her breath; unlike TIEs gunships actually had some fairly significant hull plating and even minimal shields. She fired again, cognizant of the remaining TIE trying to avoid laserfire as their stolen transport’s guns opened up. It didn’t succeed in dodging the blasts as one of its solar panels shredded, sending the starfighter spinning out of control straight towards Sabine’s stolen TIE.

She jerked her TIE sideways, but not quickly enough; the edge of the other ship’s remaining wing clipped the open hatch, tangling the two ships up as both dropped towards the ground. Sabine tried frantically to get control of the TIE again, dragging on the controls and swearing in Mando’a, before the ground seemed to rise up and slap the TIE out of the air. Sabine was thrown against the side of the cockpit, her vision briefly blacking out.

When she opened her eyes again, it was to feel someone’s hands on her arms, trying to drag her free. Sabine automatically tried to jerk away before Hera snapped, “Sabine, stop! It’s me!”

Sabine stopped fighting, blinking rapidly to try and clear her vision. She had a bad moment where all she could see was blackness – _well, Kanan manages well enough, but then again, he’s a Jedi_ – before she realized her helmet was misaligned. After a few seconds she was able to help Hera free her legs where they had gotten tangled up in what was left of the pilot’s seat and the rigging that held the still-unconscious TIE pilot in place, then scrambled upright, dragging her helmet off. The first thing she did was take a deep breath of smoke-tinted air and cough, which made her jam her helmet on again so the air filters would spare her that.

“Where’s –”

She saw too late that the gunship had managed to land, stormtroopers pouring out to surround Kanan and Rukh. Others grabbed Ezra – conscious now but clearly groggy – and snapped binders onto his wrists. Sabine saw Kanan turn his head from side to side, clearly aware of the unwelcome new arrivals.

“No,” Hera whispered, spotting them at the same time as Sabine. “No, no, no –” She was on her feet, Sabine forgotten, the blaster in her hand forgotten, the rest of the battlefield forgotten. “No!”

Sabine didn’t see Rukh move, and didn’t know if it was because he had activated his personal cloak again or if it was from her concussion. One moment Kanan was on his feet; the next he was on his knees, slumping onto the ground as the stormtroopers closed in around him.

Hera screamed. Kanan’s name might have been in it, or she might have just been screaming. She jerked forwards towards the stormtroopers before Sabine lunged and caught her, hanging on as Hera fought her with desperate strength. She dragged Hera back towards the transport, unwilling to release her with one hand so that she could fire back at the stormtroopers who were now turning their attention towards them.

“Zeb!” she yelled. “Zeb, get us out of here!”

He swung the transport around so that she could scramble inside, pulling Hera with her. Chopper got the hatch slammed shut behind them. Hera shuddered all over, then, as Sabine cautiously released her, crumpled onto the floor, sobbing.

“Hera, we’ll –” Sabine began, then the transport rocked under blasterfire and she decided to leave it for later. She threw herself into the empty driver’s seat, pulling her helmet off and flipping switches to transfer gunnery control to her. “Zeb, get us out of here!”

He grunted in response and sent the transport rocketing up over the rubble that had been buildings only a few months earlier. Sabine fired back at the stormtroopers chasing them, but with the TIEs and speeder bikes out of commission they couldn’t get far. She saw the gunship lifting away, heading not back towards the Imperial Complex, but up, towards one of the star destroyers in low orbit over the planet.

“Karabast,” she whispered, and resisted the urge to follow Hera’s example and burst into tears. Instead she just kept firing until all the stormtroopers were out of sight, then slumped back in her seat, defeated.

Zeb slowed the transport to a more normal pace. Moving on autopilot, Sabine slid off the seat to yank at the underside of the consoles in front of her until she could disconnect the transponder, then just stayed where she was, leaning her head against the side of the console as the transport traveled on into the dark shadows of the ruined city, listening to the sound of Hera crying.


	2. Starlight

Sabine dry-swallowed the pain tablets Zeb had found for her in the transport’s emergency medical kit – sometimes all the regulations the Empire had weren’t a total disaster – but still had to stop what she was doing and lean her head against the console, waiting for the flashing lights in front of her eyes to fade so that she could get back to work. She kept telling herself that the blow to the head was the only reason her eyes seemed to be watering; she wasn’t crying. It felt like five months ago all over again – that first awful day after Kanan, and then barely twenty-four hours later that endless night up on the northern prairies waiting and waiting and waiting, trying to avoid the Imperial patrols searching for them, and the realization that Ezra wasn’t coming back. Those old wounds hadn’t even been scarred over, just scabbed, and it felt like they’d been ripped open all over again. Not to mention that this was giving Sabine flashbacks to the _first_ time Kanan had gotten captured, too.

She lifted her aching head away from the console, rubbing the heel of her hand over her forehead, and went back to fiddling with the communications console. Transports only had a rudimentary one compared to more sophisticated vessels, but she should still be able to get into the Imperial records from here. Unlike the – the last time, Ezra and Kanan were still alive, still _here_ , which meant that there was still a chance. There would be a chance right up until the end, whenever that came. Sabine didn’t intend to let it come.

A green light went on in the console and Sabine scrambled for her datapad. With no display screen, she couldn’t look at the results directly from the console, but she had already plugged her datapad in and was able to pull up the records.

“Come on, come on –” It was difficult to focus her eyes on the screen, but she squinted until she could force the blurry shapes into recognizable letters. Then she swore, stood up without remembering to unplug the datapad, and almost had it yanked out of her hand by the cord. Sabine swore again, jerked the cord free, and shut the console down just in case the Empire noticed something amiss and tried to backtrack her data request.

She tucked the datapad under her arm and climbed out of the transport, rubble crunching beneath her boot heels as she made her way out of their makeshift garage. They had gotten lucky and found a building that had only been partially demolished, leaving its ground floor almost intact except for the missing back wall, which was just large enough for them to drive the transport into so that it wouldn’t be spotted from above. The remaining rooms all showed signs of having had to be vacated rapidly, which was rather reassuring as such things went: it meant that there had probably been no one in the house when the haphazard demolition had begun. Sabine hoped that the family who had lived here was still alive.

She made her way down the dark hallway towards the house’s main room, where a low, decorative wall/counter arrangement separated it from the kitchen. Zeb had checked it out earlier, clearly hopeful, but the power had been cut and everything perishable left was inedible. He had been inspecting the remnants of the canned foods when Sabine had gone back to the transport.

Now he was sitting against the wall near the front window, his bo-rifle in his lap and a few empty tins with the lids peeled off scattered on the floor by his knee. Hera was still where Sabine had left her, curled up on a couch with her back to the rest of the room. Chopper had stationed himself protectively beside her, his dome swiveling to track Sabine’s approach as she came in. Hera wasn’t crying anymore, at least, which Sabine chose to take cautiously as a good sign. 

She crossed the room to sit down next to Zeb, who looked hopefully at her as she pulled out the datapad. “I’ve got them,” Sabine told him, keeping her voice pitched low so as not to disturb Hera. “They’re on the _Chimaera_ , Thrawn’s flagship. It’s still in orbit around Lothal right now, but it’s scheduled to leave soon.”

Zeb flattened his ears. “Mustafar?” he asked. Clearly Sabine wasn’t the only one having flashbacks to the last time this had happened. That had ended well; maybe it was a good sign.

She shook her head. “Coruscant.” She showed him the datapad. “Look at the signature on these orders – that’s directly from the Imperial Palace, maybe even the Emperor himself.”

Zeb’s shoulders slumped. “Well,” he admitted reluctantly, “we knew he had an interest in the planet.” He scratched at one ear and added, “I thought Thrawn wasn’t in-system right now.”

“He’s not.” Sabine indicated the recipient of the orders. “Commodore Faro is in command of the fleet while he’s away. I guess he didn’t take the _Chimaera_ this time.” _Maybe the Emperor isn’t too keen on him bringing his own warship to Coruscant these days_ , she thought hopefully; it might be a sign of unrest between the two men. If it was, maybe they could find a way to exploit that. Sabine couldn’t think of one right now, though, and it didn’t have much impact on their current problem.

“We could –” Zeb hesitated over the words, but he knew as well as Sabine that it all came down to the fact that they didn’t have a ship right now, let alone one that could take on an Imperial star destroyer. “So it’s over,” he said instead. “All that and it’s just over.”

“No.”

They both looked up at the sound of Hera’s voice. Sabine winced, thinking that she should have taken Zeb to another room to let him know the bad news, but it was a little late for that now.

Hera’s eyes were red-rimmed from weeping, but she was on her feet, her expression determined as she folded her hands over her stomach. Sabine suspected she didn’t even know she was doing it.

“We’re not leaving them to the Emperor,” Hera went on. There was a raw note to her voice that made Sabine wince, but it was nothing compared to the determination in the words. “Not like this. Not now.”

Sabine pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, awkward as that was with her armor. “Hera, we don’t have a ship,” she said.

“We can get one.”

“We’ve been trying to get one for months,” Sabine pointed out cautiously. “We haven’t managed. And there’s the Imperial blockade, anyway –”

“Before we weren’t in Capital City,” Hera said.

“The spaceport’s locked down tight,” Zeb said dourly. “We’d have a job of a time getting in, even with just the three of us. And then we’d have to get out, not to mention past the blockade.”

“I’m not talking about the public spaceport,” Hera said firmly.

Sabine sat up in alarm. “Hera, we can’t get inside the Imperial Complex – and even if we could, they’d definitely know the second we tried to get into one of the hangars. Or out of one.” And that had gone poorly the last time they had tried it. A lot of things had gone poorly the last times they had tried them. Their track record wasn’t very good right now.

“So we don’t try to get into the Imperial Complex,” Hera said. She crossed her arms across her chest and went on, “There are a lot of things I could say right now. I could tell you that no matter what happens, we cannot allow the Emperor to learn whatever secrets Ezra brought with him out of that temple. We cannot allow him to learn how Ezra – how Ezra brought Kanan back.” Her voice faltered briefly before strengthening again. “I’m sure that both of you can imagine what Palpatine might do with that knowledge. The survival of the rebellion could depend on it.”

Sabine chewed her lip, resisting the urge to exchange a look with Zeb. She had no idea what Ezra had done or where he had been, but it definitely wasn’t something that she wanted Emperor Palpatine to have access to. Or anyone else, for that matter. _She_ didn’t even want to know about it, because there was no way there was a good, rational explanation.

“I could say all that,” Hera said quietly, “and you know as well as I do that it does matter. But it’s not why I have to do this. And I don’t think it is for you, either.” Her fingers brushed the slight curve of her stomach before she crossed her arms again. “I can’t leave them again. Either of them.”

Sabine pushed to her feet, wincing as a joint popped. “No,” she said. “Neither can I.”

Zeb stayed seated, but he nodded in agreement. “You have a plan?” he asked Hera.

Hera’s shoulders slumped briefly in relief, and Sabine felt a twinge of shame. She hadn’t meant to let Hera think she would have to do this alone. That wasn’t what they were to each other.

“I have a plan,” Hera said. She looked at Sabine and added apologetically, “You’ll have to steal an Imperial uniform.”

“Since that involves knocking out an Imperial, I’m all for it,” Sabine said. “What are we doing?”

* * *

_Kanan’s alive._

It was the only thing Hera could think about, even though most of her attention should have been on the scene taking place only a few dozen meters away. _Kanan’s alive. Kanan’s alive. Kanan’s alive_ –

For the thousandth time in the past three hours she dragged her mind away from that one fundamental point in the universe, the one thing about which everything else seemed to revolve. She couldn’t afford to be distracted now, not when everything depended on the Empire playing exactly into their hands in a way that probably had more to do with the good will of the Force than it did with mere luck. But Kanan and Ezra were Jedi, the fortunate sons of the Force. Surely, surely –

Hera bit down on the knuckle of her gun hand, staring out at the ruined courtyard from her dubious shelter. Most of the buildings in this courtyard had been razed to the ground, but the basements were still here; Hera was kneeling on the stairs that led upwards into flattened remains of the ground floor, which consistently mostly of a few low chunks of wall and a lot of torn up flooring. Rusted laundry droids still stood sentinel against the walls below her, along with a basket that had been tipped over with the clothes still in it. They were ragged, filthy; it looked like something – maybe a Loth-cat or Loth-rat – had been nesting in it. It didn’t bode well for how much time the inhabitants had had to leave before the demolition had begun.

She couldn’t remember if she had ever been in this neighborhood before the Empire had demolished it, but there was very little left behind except rubble and the foundations of the buildings that had stood here – apartment buildings, probably, with shops on their ground floors. Now their stolen transport stood parked lopsidedly and very obviously in the open space left by the destroyed buildings, its front lights illuminating the courtyard and making it clearly visible to the air patrols above. Hera just hoped that it was one of those air patrols that would investigate, rather than sending for a stormtrooper squadron. And that they actually _did_ want to investigate, rather than just blasting the transport from above. But she was betting that while the Empire would be happy to have them all dead, it would still prefer to take them alive.

Chopper, balanced precariously on one of the steps below her, grumbled with impatience. Hera shushed him absently, but couldn’t blame him. She was tight with nerves in a way that made her hyper-aware of the child inside her, the strangeness of her own body right now. Her child. Kanan’s child.

The child of a Jedi Knight.

Maybe the last one that would ever be born.

She wondered if anyone besides her had realized that. It was possible that ultimately it didn’t mean anything – Kanan had told her once that the Force didn’t always breed true, so there was no guarantee that the child she was carrying was any more likely to be a Force-user than any other unborn child in the galaxy. But it mattered to her, and Hera suspected that if the Empire knew she was carrying Kanan’s child, then it would matter to them too. She didn’t like to think what that might mean if she ever was captured. But she couldn’t leave this to anyone else, even if it was Zeb and Sabine. She couldn’t leave Kanan out there on his own, not if there was any chance at all of getting him back.

Chopper warbled softly, his sensor dish coming up to swivel around. Hera peered cautiously out of the entrance and spotted the incoming TIEs as they did their first flyby. Two of them, which was a little problematic; they only needed one. Well, it wasn’t like they couldn’t handle two.

She raised her comlink to her lips and said softly, “We’ve got incoming. Stand by.”

There was a comlink click in response. Hera watched the TIEs circle overhead, clearly searching for some kind of life in the transport, then both began to descend. Hera relayed this information, tightening her grip on her blaster as the TIEs settled noisily down on either side of the transport. The pilots popped their hatches and emerged, blasters drawn as they approached the vehicle. Hera eased up out of the stairwell, sighting at the back of the pilot nearest her but not firing yet. One pilot went around to the opposite side of the transport, vanishing from her line of sight; Hera felt her lekku prickle but didn’t let her grip on her blaster falter.

The pilot on her side banged a fist on the closed hatch and called out, “Anyone in there? This is the Imperial Navy! Come out now with your hands above your head!”

 _Sorry, boys_ , Hera thought, rising from her crouch as he triggered the hatch control. She kept her blaster fixed on him even as a massive purple hand shot out from inside the transport, grabbing the pilot by the throat and yanking him inside. There was a strangled yelp from the other side of the transport and the sound of blows.

Hera ran forwards, her blaster still raised, and reached the transport just as Zeb and Sabine emerged from it, Zeb dusting off his hands and looking satisfied. Sabine rolled her head from side to side, her neck cracking audibly. The three of them looked between the two TIEs.

“Take both?” Sabine asked, sounding doubtful.

Hera shook her head. “Too risky. Sabine, you and Chopper get to work on the transponder; Zeb, you take the other TIE off and hide it somewhere, then come back for the transport. I’m going to write a report for Ryder and we’ll send it in a burst transmission before we leave.”

Sabine gave her an informal salute and started towards the nearest TIE, Chopper rolling after her. Zeb headed towards the other TIE, and a moment later it lifted with a backwash of air that made Hera’s lekku twitch. She checked to make sure that the two TIE pilots were still unconscious, then found binders in the transport to make sure that they wouldn’t be going anywhere soon, either. 

She turned the transport’s front lights off so that they didn’t attract any more TIEs and sat down just inside the vehicle to type up a brief message to Ryder on her datapad. There wasn’t much to say – not that she would have said much in the first place, since even with an encrypted burst transmission there was always the chance that the Empire might intercept it. They were already looking for the stolen transport and the TIEs would be missed sooner rather than later, but all Hera needed was a few hours’ grace.

Sabine emerged from the TIE and came over to her as Hera was wrapping up the report. “We’re in luck,” she said as Hera looked inquisitively up at her. The thin starlight washed all the remaining color out of her hair and armor, giving Hera the disconcerting feeling she was speaking to a ghost. “The TIE isn’t off the _Chimaera_ , but it is assigned to one of its escort cruisers, so I just did a little fiddling to make it look like it was reassigned to the _Chimaera_. And that means that probably no one on the _Chimaera_ will personally know the pilot.”

“Good,” Hera said. She didn’t put her name on the message, since Ryder would know who had sent it, then encrypted it. She would wait to send it until just before they left. “And the _Chimaera_ ’s still here?”

“Scheduled to leave in two hours. Plenty of time.” Sabine gave her a wan smile. “Come on, let’s get Chopper painted and one of these guys out of his uniform.”

By the time Zeb came back to collect the transport and the two pilots, Sabine was dressed in fighter pilot black, holding the helmet under her arm as Hera packed her regular armor and helmet into a bag to be stowed inside the TIE they were using. Zeb looked her up and down and snorted in distaste.

“Always weird seeing you in those things.”

“Yeah, it’s not fun for me either,” Sabine said dryly. “Come on, hurry it up. We’ve got a star destroyer to catch.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Zeb ducked into the transport, sealing the hatch behind him. Sabine and Hera watched it zoom off, then Sabine turned to her.

“Hera,” she began hesitantly, “you know Zeb and I can do this on our own. You don’t have to come.”

Hera shook her head. “I can’t leave him again,” she said. She had expected her voice to tremble, but to her surprise it was perfectly calm this time.

Sabine chewed her lower lip. “I’m only going to say this once,” she said, “and then I’ll never mention it again.”

Hera arched an eyebrow.

“You’re pregnant,” Sabine said, clearly uncomfortable. “And we’re about to do something that’s probably going to get us all killed or captured. Which we do all the time, I mean, that’s not – Mandalorian women go into battle up until the point they can’t wear their armor anymore. My mother did with me and Tristan.” She waved a hand to dismiss that. “But they already have Kanan. And we know that they’ve been taking Force-sensitive children, probably for years. And we don’t know what happens to them, but I’m guessing it’s not good. If we do get captured, then I don’t know – I mean, they’re not going to treat any of us well. But it might be more dangerous for you than the rest of us.”

Hera frowned at her. “Don’t they want you to build a superweapon for them?”

“Well, yeah, but that’s just _me_.”

Hera sighed. “I understand your concerns,” she said. “And yes, I’ve thought about it too.” She touched her stomach lightly, then let her hand drop back to her side. “But that could happen just as easily here on Lothal. And I can’t leave him again. I just can’t. I won’t.”

Sabine nodded, looking relieved to have it spoken of and out of the way. “All right,” she said. “I’d rather have us all together anyway,” she added, and gave Hera a small smile. “If Zeb ever gets back.”

He returned a few minutes later, loping across the courtyard in the thin, grayish light of early dawn to join them at the remaining TIE fighter. He eyed it with distaste. “Are we doing this?”

“We’re doing this,” Hera said as Sabine pulled her stolen pilot’s helmet on. “Everyone in. Let’s go get our boys.”

* * *

TIE fighters weren’t built to carry passengers, but as they had discovered a few years ago the _last_ time they had had to rescue Kanan, they could do so if absolutely necessary. The addition of Chopper made it a tight fit, but Sabine was able to lift off without difficulty. The extra weight made the starfighter a little more difficult to handle than usual, but not impossibly so, and it wasn’t the worst thing Sabine had ever flown by a long shot. She took the ship up out of Capital City airspace – which didn’t even rate a blip from the TIE fighter patrols still circling the city – and past wispy white clouds until they broke atmosphere for open space.

Well – mostly open space. The Imperial blockade was as heavy as Sabine remembered it from when they had arrived year all those months ago, massive star destroyers and their escort ships hanging in orbit around Lothal as if the planet had acquired an asteroid belt made up of capital warships. She licked her lips, uncomfortably aware of the fragility of her unshielded TIE fighter as she approached the bulk of the _Chimaera_ and keyed her comm.

“This is TIE CC-15 inbound to _Chimaera_ ,” Sabine said. “I’m transmitting my transfer orders now.”

She hit the key to do so, mentally crossing her fingers. If this didn’t work out, she was prepared to dive out of the pilot’s chair and let Hera take over, since her pounding headache was starting to come back and she didn’t fancy trying to outfly the _Chimaera_ ’s flock of TIE fighters and TIE Defenders.

But the orders that she, Hera, and Chopper had mocked up apparently passed muster, because the comm officer on the other end of the call just made a vague sound of annoyance and gave her an approach vector to one of the _Chimaera_ ’s hangars. _“Another fifteen minutes and you would be stuck back on_ Concussor _, Lieutenant. This is cutting it a bit close.”_

“I got the orders when I got them,” Sabine protested. “I was dirtside; I didn’t even have a chance to grab my gear.”

_“Hmmph. Well, hurry up and land, or you’ll be back in your former berth.”_

“Yes, ma’am,” Sabine muttered. She let her breath out as the call terminated, feeling the balance of the starfighter tilt slightly as Zeb relaxed and shifted his weight. Hera, with one hand still on the back of Sabine’s chair, was as tense as ever.

“All right, everyone get down,” she said as the _Chimaera_ grew huge in front of them, the magnetic containment shield revealing the interior of the hangar. Hera and Zeb flattened themselves to the floor and Chopper tucked himself behind Sabine’s seat, out of sight of anyone looking in through the viewport. They were lucky TIE pilots usually tended to their own starfighters on the _Chimaera_ , though Sabine knew that wasn’t true for all ships in the Imperial fleet. Thrawn apparently had a thing for personal responsibility that extended to everyone under his command. “And wish me luck.”

She repressed a shudder as the TIE passed through the magcon shield, uncomfortably aware that they had just passed irrevocably into enemy territory. Lothal might have been an occupied world and Capital City under military rule, but a ship in space was the sovereign domain of its commander. And Thrawn might not have been onboard on the moment, but that didn’t make the _Chimaera_ any less his.

 _Buck up, Wren, it’s not like you haven’t done this before_. Yeah, but that time they had had an extraction plan. And it had ended all right.

Sabine breathed out slowly, landing the TIE fighter neatly at the end of one rank of fighters. As she unstrapped herself from her chair harness, Hera breathed out, “May the Force be with you.”

“Yeah,” Sabine said. “You too. Chop, I’ll see you soon. I hope.”

He grumbled in response, still sulking about the paint job Sabine had had barely enough paint left to give him. At this point they knew that Thrawn was wary of any C1 units wandering around, but hopefully he hadn’t transferred that wariness to his crew.

She popped the hatch and climbed out, nodding thanks to a member of the deck crew who had wheeled a ladder over for her. “Welcome aboard the _Chimaera_ , ma’am,” he said as Sabine shut the hatch behind her and climbed down, removing her helmet once she had reached the deck, since it was what a real TIE pilot would have done.

“Thanks,” she said. “Can I check in with the CAG?”

She had absolutely no idea who the commander of the _Chimaera_ ’s air group was at the moment, since Vult Skerris had been killed in Hera’s failed assault of Lothal almost five months ago – just about the only positive outcome of that disaster. Hopefully it wasn’t someone who had known her as Ria Talla at Skystrike Academy or Sabine Wren back at the Mandalore Imperial Academy.

The crewman indicated the direction of the pilots’ ready room, which fortunately was in the same place on every star destroyer. “You’ll have to see to your TIE yourself, unless it needs a mechanic,” he warned.

“No worries,” Sabine said. “Paint’s a little scuffed, that’s all.” She tucked her helmet under her arm and strolled off in the direction of the hangar doors, not daring to look back to make sure the crewman wasn’t inspecting her TIE more closely. She resisted the urge to look up at the observation deck over the hangar, just in case someone had seen her come in and was watching her. Her face _was_ on a lot of Imperial wanted posters all over Lothal, but she didn’t know how familiar the crew of the _Chimaera_ would be with her. Ezra had apparently managed to wander around on the _Chimaera_ for a while last year without being recognized, but that had been a year ago. A lot had changed in the past year.

And Ezra and Kanan were somewhere on this ship.

Sabine knew where the detention center was, of course, but she was also certain that there would be a heavy guard on it, and probably no good way of getting them out without immediately setting off alarms all over the ship. From what she had heard, Commodore Karyn Faro was no fool, and with a pair of Jedi to deliver directly to the Emperor she would be taking no chances. Once they were in hyperspace, there would be no easy way off the ship, either. They were probably going to have to go all the way to Coruscant, which was exactly where Sabine _didn’t_ want to go. Well, it probably wasn’t the dumbest thing she had ever done.

With this uncomfortable thought at the forefront of her mind, she found the CAG in the ready room, relieved to find the woman a complete stranger. She looked a little annoyed to be saddled with a new pilot without asking for one, but the _Chimaera_ had lost enough pilots and not had them replaced in the past year that she clearly wasn’t going to protest too much. Sabine nodded and said all the things a commanding officer expected to hear from a new pilot, then let another female pilot show her to her quarters, which she was sharing with four other pilots. It should have been five – the rooms were built for six – but two of the bunks had been empty due to deaths in the line of duty. Since she hadn’t had time to go back to her nonexistent former berth on the cruiser _Concussor_ , she was then taken to Supply to get extra uniforms out of storage – presumably the property of one of the pilots who had been killed, which fit her better than the uniform she was currently wearing. She just hoped no one had noticed that before she changed into one of the clean uniforms.

“I like your hair,” one of the other pilots in her quarters said.

Sabine fingered the purple tips ruefully, which was the only color left in it. Her roots had grown out and most of the dye had faded, leaving the bulk of her hair a few shades lighter than her natural color. She hadn’t been able to get hair dye, either. “Thanks,” she said. “I’d color it again, but –” She shrugged.

The other woman laughed. “Yeah, finding good product on _that_ dirtball is a waste of time. Hopefully we’re on Imperial Center long enough to get some shopping done.”

“That would be nice,” Sabine said neutrally. “Where’s the mess around here?”

Armed with directions, she left the barracks and headed purposefully down the corridor, noting the location of the various security cameras as she did so without seeming to look around. TIE pilots typically had the run of the ship, but also didn’t tend to use it, since as a species they were both conceited and insular. Sabine would have to go back to Supply and see if she could get her hands on a regular officer’s uniform, which was less likely to raise flags from the internal security personnel watching the cams, assuming that they were constantly monitored either by sentients or droids.

She paused as a klaxon sounded briefly, her hands clenching into fists. But a moment later the klaxon cut out and an unfamiliar woman’s voice sounded over the intercom. _“All hands, prepare to make the jump to hyperspace.”_

Star destroyers were so big that she hadn’t even felt the ship leave orbit around Lothal. The only indication of its movement was her stomach turning over as they left realspace and entered hyperspace, heading away from Lothal and towards the Imperial throneworld. Despite the fact that her entire crew was on the ship with her, Sabine suddenly felt very alone. All they had to do was make it to Coruscant alive, then grab Kanan and Ezra before they disappeared into the Imperial Palace or whatever other hole Palpatine had prepared for them. And not get caught in the process. Easy.

* * *

Alexsander Kallus emerged from the cool bulk of the old Massassi temple into the humid heat of Yavin 4’s tropical summer, sweat immediately springing up on his brow and at the back of his neck. Worlds like this always reminded him of Onderon and patrols in that unruly world’s thick jungles, aware of the cries of alien beasts all around him and the haunting knowledge that somewhere in that mass of greenery were Saw Gerrera and his Partisans, all of them intent on picking off Alek and his men one by one – or all at once, for that matter, Gerrera had never been picky.

And now they were on the same side.

Well, at least Gerrera had never shown up on Yavin, so Alek had been spared the indignity of having to be held back from going for his throat. He didn’t know if he would have been able to control himself in such a situation, even after all this time. The boy he had been would never have been able to understand how he had ended up here.

He ran a hand through his hair as he walked farther out from the entrance to the old temple, heading for the shade provided by the jungle. The rebels here fought a constant losing battle to keep the jungle from creeping up and recovering the ground that they had cleared around the temple complex; Alek hoped that they were going to be rather more successful against the Empire than they were proving to be against the elements.

Spacecraft – X-wing and Y-wing starfighters, a few U-wing support ships, the odd hunter-killer or light freighter – were parked at irregular intervals around the buildings in the temple complex. Alek looked automatically for the now-familiar form of the _Ghost_ and blinked to find it absent before remembering that Captain Rex had borrowed it a few rotations previous for some errand of his own. Several of the senior officers on the base had discussed reassigning or at least repurposing it at various intervals over the past five months, but so far Rex and Alek had always managed to argue them out of it. If they ever got confirmation that Hera Syndulla was dead, then perhaps. But until then it felt too much like giving up for Alek to be comfortable with it. He and Rex – and Wedge Antilles on two occasions – used the ship when they needed to go offworld, and for the moment that was enough to placate General Draven and the other officers that it was doing something other than taking up space that might be better used for something else.

Alek didn’t think that Rex had told him what he was using the _Ghost_ for this time, but he presumed that he would find out sooner or later. By mutual unspoken consent they kept the ship scrupulously clean, never going into any of the four private cabins; the most they had done was remove everything perishable from the refrigeration unit and the storage cupboards in the galley. It was as if they were both waiting for Syndulla and the rest of her team to return from Lothal and take up exactly where they had left off, despite what the rest of the rebels on Yavin thought. They had found out from intercepted Imperial transmissions some time ago that Kanan Jarrus was dead, something which Alek found unlikely after three years of trying to accomplish exactly that and getting nowhere. Since then, there had been nothing. As far as he was concerned, no news was good news.

He spent some time walking amongst the parked ships, letting the movement and the warmth work some of the kinks out of his muscles. Despite being more than capable in the field – certainly more capable than some of Draven’s so-called intelligence operatives – he had been relegated to the equivalent of desk duty. The excuse he had been given by Draven was that he had a better eye for Imperial operations and intercepted Imperial transmissions than most of the other rebels and that skill might as well be put to use. It certainly wasn’t untrue, but Alek was also aware that no one really wanted him in the field just yet. For that matter, he wasn’t entirely certain that he _wanted_ to be in the field, at least not in a position where he would be directly opposite Imperial service members. He had made his choice, but he didn’t always enjoy the idea of driving it home that thoroughly.

Not that he had been given the option of doing so any time lately, of course, or was likely to have it in the future.

“Alek.”

He turned at the sound of Cassian Andor’s voice. The other man came around the side of the U-wing Alek had been standing beside, regarding the encroaching forest with the same mild distaste that Alek felt. Another city boy, Alek suspected, though Cassian had never mentioned his upbringing to him.

“Something wrong?” Alek asked. Like him, Cassian was an intelligence officer; unlike him, Cassian was actually allowed out into the field, presumably because he wasn’t an Imperial defector. He just had a droid who happened to be, though fortunately for Alek’s peace of mind K-2SO was nowhere in sight at the moment.

“We’ve just intercepted a transmission from Lothal,” Cassian said, holding a datapad out towards him. “I know you still have an interest in that world.”

Alek took the datapad. The message on it had only been partially decrypted – the Empire had recently changed their encryption codes and they hadn’t succeeded in fully cracking them yet – but the relevant part was clear. “Is this a mistake?” he asked, looking up.

Cassian raised his eyebrows. “You would know better than me, I think.”

“The last we heard from Lothal, Kanan Jarrus had been dead for some time,” Alek said slowly. Since then – all that they had had out of Lothal were whispers, none of the major reports that would have caught the attention of rebel intelligence the way this one had. He knew that Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Seventh Fleet were still deployed to the sector, that the planet was still under a military blockade, and that Arihnda Pryce had somehow managed to hang onto the governorship despite nearly losing both it and her life over the same incident that had set Thrawn’s TIE Defender program back months. He didn’t need intelligence reports for that. He could have found it out from the HoloNet if he wanted.

He tapped a finger against the datapad’s screen and went on, “But this says that he and Ezra Bridger are being transferred to Coruscant as of today. _And_ that there was an insurgent attack on the convoy transporting them to Capital City. Sabine Wren was definitely identified as involved, though not her companions.”

“I suspect we can guess who they were,” Cassian said, his tone light and dry.

“Indeed.” Alek rubbed a hand over his chin, wondering what he could possibly do with this information. “Have you told the general or Senator Mothma about this yet?”

“I thought I would ask for your analysis first,” Cassian said, “as you’re more familiar with the situation on Lothal than I am. But it is going to the general.”

There was no point that Alek could see in trying to keep it a secret, not that Cassian would have done so anyway. “At this point you know as much as I do,” he said bitterly, looking down at the datapad and trying to will the encrypted portions to decrypt themselves.

It wasn’t that Alek didn’t want to know what was going on in the Lothal system, because he did, very badly. He just didn’t know what he could do with the scraps of information Cassian had just given him, or for that matter any way that he could present it to Senator Mothma, General Madine, or General Draven and get anything out of them apart from, “Well, that’s very interesting, but they made their choice.” Rex, along with Alek and the Antilles boy, had worked up an infiltration plan a few months ago that was more likely than not to work, but it had been shot down. As far as the leaders of the Massassi group were concerned, Hera Syndulla had gambled and lost and the Rebel Alliance didn’t have the resources to invest further in one backrocket Outer Rim world. Even if there were Jedi involved.

A shadow passed over them, making Alek and Cassian both look up. The familiar diamond shape of the _Ghost_ came gently in for a landing – without any of Syndulla’s grace in piloting, it was true, but a perfectly functional one nonetheless. The engines powered down a moment later.

Since he was outside anyway, Alek went over to greet Rex. Cassian followed him, still frowning to himself. Rex deserved to hear this as much as Alek did – more than, to tell the truth – and maybe he would have some kind of idea about what to do with it.

The ship’s ramp came down as Alek and Cassian approached. “Captain Rex,” Alek called, stepping onto the ramp; the old clone trooper was standing by the ladder that led up to the cockpit, looking up at it.

He turned at Alek’s voice. “Kallus,” he said, then added, “Cassian,” nodding a greeting to the other man.

“Your timing is excellent,” Alek said. “There’s news from Lothal.”

Rex’s bushy eyebrows went up. “What kind of news?”

“I’m not sure,” Alek said, “but according to the latest reports, Ezra Bridger and Kanan Jarrus are in Imperial custody and being transported to Coruscant as we speak.”

“That’s impossible.”

He looked up, startled, at the woman who had descended the ladder after Rex. She was a tall orange-skinned Togruta woman whom he had only seen before in blurry holograms, now with bandages wrapped around her torso and an alarmed expression on her face. Alek’s gaze fell to the two lightsabers that hung from either hip, then he looked back at her face, his mind gone utterly blank.

“Ahsoka,” Cassian said from behind him, sounding startled. “I thought –”

“Where is Ezra now?” Ahsoka Tano demanded. “And Hera, Sabine, Zeb – Kanan? What’s happening on Lothal?”

Alek glanced at Rex, bewildered, but the old clone just looked grim. “Well,” Alek forced himself to say, if only because someone had to say it, “that’s the problem. We don’t know.”

* * *

“Well, this is…cozy,” Zeb grumbled, squirming around in an attempt to find a more comfortable position in the cramped TIE cockpit. He kept his voice low, though with the hatch closed the TIE’s hull plating should have been thick enough to keep the sound from carrying.

Hera drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs, a position she knew that she wouldn’t be able to manage for much longer, assuming she lived that long. She was aware, in a distant, aching kind of way that she didn’t want to think about too closely, that she missed her mother; she would have given a lot to have Alecto Syndulla here with her now. Well, not _here_ , but in the vague future she had occasionally envisaged as a girl she had always thought that she would have her mother with her if she ever had a child. Twi’lek families were generally large and close, extended family groups tending to live together. The Syndullas had been hit very hard, first by the Clone War and then by the war against the Empire; now that she was no longer a teenager and had seen more of how the Empire operated, Hera was aware that her family had been targeted, winnowed down over the years to present less of a threat to Moff Mors and the other Imperials on Ryloth. Hers wasn’t the only powerful family on the planet who had suffered more than its fair share of deaths and bad luck, but it was probably the one that had suffered the most.

 _Something that apparently wasn’t limited to Ryloth_ , she thought bitterly, leaning her head back against the curved hull of the cockpit. A _maladic_ , they would have called it back on her homeworld; “curse” was the best rendering of the word in Basic, but that wasn’t quite accurate.

But Kanan was back. On this ship, even, locked up in a cell somewhere and separated from them by the maze of corridors that made up an Imperial star destroyer. Getting out of the TIE now to go and look for him would have been suicide, but it was still all Hera could do to stay seated, to wait until the ship went into its night cycle or they dropped out of hyperspace, whichever came first.

Chopper grumbled to himself, low and displeased. “I know,” Hera told him wearily, “but I didn’t see you having any better ideas.”

He subsided with a final, reluctant grumble. Zeb eyed them both warily, but didn’t ask for details; besides, as much as he complained about it, Hera was fairly certain that by now he could understand Chopper without too much difficulty.

“So,” Zeb said eventually, squirming again and accidentally kicking Hera in the foot. He drew his leg back with an apologetic look. “Er –” he began awkwardly.

Hera raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to say whatever it was he was going to say. She was guessing she knew what it was going to be, but she supposed she should let him get it out.

Zeb cleared his throat and straightened up as much as he could in the cramped space. “If you – ah – go into labor,” he said, “I can – I mean, I asked our medic back on Lothal about what to do. So I can deliver the baby.”

That was not actually what Hera had been expecting him to say. “Our medic is actually a veterinarian,” she said, which was the first thing that came to mind.

“I mean, the principle has to be the same, right –”

Hera covered her face with her hands, torn between bursting into hysterical laughter and bursting into tears. “I’m not going to go into labor, Zeb,” she managed to say. “I’m not far enough along for that. Unless something really goes wrong,” she had to add; she had, actually, talked to their medic about that. Veterinarian or not.

He looked relieved to hear that. “Well – good,” he said, his expression so horribly embarrassed that Hera briefly considered throwing herself out of the TIE and causing a scene just to alleviate the tension.

Chopper snickered.

“Oh, better him than you!” Hera snapped. “You’re not exactly a midwife droid!”

Not that Twi’leks ever used midwife droids anyway; medical droids of any sort were rare on Ryloth, whose population disliked and distrusted them. Hera’s uncle – her father’s first cousin – was a doctor who had gotten his degree from the medical school at the University of Alderaan; the Syndullas, like other upper-class families, had a tendency to send promising family members offworld to study medicine or law or whatever they thought was needed at the time.

Clearly eager to have that particular topic out of the way, Zeb went on hastily, “What’s the plan if the bucketheads _do_ find us?”

Hera rubbed at her forehead, relieved by the change in subject. It wouldn’t be difficult, she knew. All it took was one person looking in the viewport at the wrong time, or a mechanic opening the hatch for whatever reason. “What’s the worst they can do?”

Zeb eyed her. “Kill us.”

“Not without Thrawn’s say-so.”

“I don’t know, they’ve been trying pretty hard so far –”

“If we get caught, then they’ll put us in the brig,” Hera said.

“Which would be bad.”

“Which is where Kanan and Ezra are,” she finished. Off Zeb’s dubious expression, she added, “I know it’s not exactly a good plan.”

“That’s not actually a plan.”

Hera sighed. “I know,” she said after a moment. “I just don’t know what else to do.”

“Yeah,” Zeb said, in a tone that was clearly meant to be encouraging. “Me neither.”

Hera gave him a wan smile and leaned back against the hull, trying to calculate both how long they had until they reached Coruscant and when the ship’s day cycle would tick over into the dead hours of the night cycle, when they might have a little more freedom to move around. Or at least to stand up and stretch.

“Hera,” Zeb said eventually, and she raised her gaze to him again. Clearly picking his words carefully, he said, “What if what Ezra brought back isn’t Kanan?”

“It’s him,” Hera said.

Zeb frowned. “I don’t understand all this Force stuff,” he said, “but isn’t it possible –”

“It’s him,” Hera repeated, then put her head back and shut her eyes, not wanting him to pursue this line of inquiry any further. She didn’t want to consider the possibility, because it had to be Kanan, it _had_ to be. She refused to let herself contemplate any other option.

* * *

Alek had never seen Mon Mothma completely taken aback before, and wasn’t sure how he felt about the experience now.

She was in the command center of the central temple with General Draven, the two Mon Calamari admirals Raddus and Ackbar, and a hologram of Bail Organa, blue and a little glitchy from the encryption software they were using. Draven swung around towards them as they came in; Alek didn’t need to be a Jedi to know that the words, “This is a private meeting,” were on the tip of his tongue before he saw Ahsoka and his eyes widened.

“Senator –” he began.

Mon Mothma was already turning towards the intrusion, Bail Organa’s hologram looking in the same direction despite the fact that the holoprojector wasn’t in range to pick up the image yet.

“Ahsoka!” Admiral Ackbar said in his gravelly Mon Calamari voice. “What – we had heard –”

Mon Mothma’s mouth opened and shut silently, the senator evidently too shocked for words.

“What’s going on?” Senator Organa demanded. “Who’s there?”

“Bail, it’s me.” Ahsoka strolled into the center of the senior officers as though she had every right to be there – which, Alek supposed, she did, since by all accounts she was the original founder of the Rebel Alliance’s intelligence division and thus outranked both Davits Draven and Airen Cracken, the two generals who shared command of Security and Intelligence.

Ahsoka inclined her head towards Bail Organa’s shocked face and added, “It’s good to see you again. I’m sorry, I don’t have time for explanations right now. I have to get to Lothal immediately.”

Mon Mothma recovered her composure enough to say, “I’m afraid that’s not possible. Ahsoka, it’s very good to see you, but I have to insist you be debriefed before anything else. We were all under the impression that you had been killed some years ago.” She didn’t even have to glance at Draven or Raddus, both of whom were moving to flank the Togruta woman. Ackbar stayed where he was, though Alek could tell he was tense, ready to interpose himself between Mon Mothma and Ahsoka at the slightest provocation.

Ahsoka didn’t look at either of the two men, just folded her arms across her chest and regarded Mon Mothma grimly. “Ezra Bridger – whom I’m assuming is the one who told you that – wasn’t lying, but he didn’t know the whole story then. But he’s done something now that threatens the entire fabric of the galaxy and I have to find him before it’s too late.”

Mon Mothma stared at her as if she had lost her mind. “Nobody’s heard anything from Lothal in months,” she said gently. “The planet is under an Imperial blockade, and we can’t risk any more ships or people in trying to reach it. It’s not worth the cost.”

“This is,” Ahsoka said.

“And why is that?” Raddus demanded. “Whoever you are –”

“I’m Ahsoka Tano. I don’t think we’ve met before, but Senators Mothma and Organa know me, and Davits and Admiral Ackbar as well.”

General Draven nodded reluctantly, and Ackbar inclined his head.

“In any case, Bridger doesn’t seem to be on Lothal anymore, at least according to the most recent reports,” Alek put in, gesturing with the datapad Cassian had handed him earlier. As Senator Mothma and General Draven turned their attention on him – the two Mon Calamari each kept one eye on Ahsoka and turned the other towards him, something that Alek still found profoundly disconcerting – he tapped the datapad and said, “The most recent Imperial transmissions we’ve intercepted report that Bridger and Jarrus have been captured and are being transferred to Coruscant.”

“Then I have to go to Coruscant,” Ahsoka said.

“That’s just not possible,” Mon Mothma said.

“We don’t have time for this,” Draven said, his voice brisk. “The Empire has a new weapon, something that’s rumored to be a planet-killer. That’s what we need to be spending our time on, not some Jedi mysticism.”

Before Ahsoka could respond, Mon Mothma added, “And, Ahsoka, before we can make any decisions, we need to know where you’ve been for the past two years.”

Ahsoka put her hands down flat on the sides of the holotable and leaned forward, every line of her body conveying urgency. “Nowhere,” she said, “and everywhere. If the Emperor gets his hands on Ezra and Kanan, then the Rebel Alliance won’t only be in grave danger. The Rebel Alliance – everything we are, everything we could be – will wither on the vine. Palpatine will destroy reality itself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With grateful thanks to Stella, Kablob, and Snacky for beta services, hand-holding, and emotional support.
> 
> This chapter was written prior to the release of _Thrawn: Treason_ and does not incorporate material from it.
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two. I am currently working two chapters ahead.


	3. Renegades

“Kanan, I’m sorry.”

Kanan raised his head at the sound of Ezra’s voice. The blow to the head and the electroshock overload that had followed had left everything slightly fuzzy even in the Force; he knew from experience that it would pass, but until then reaching into the Force was like moving underwater – doable but strangely muted. “Sorry for what?”

“Everything.” He heard Ezra shift beside him on the bench, drawing his knees up to his chest as his bootheels scraped against the metal. The Imperials hadn’t bothered to separate them this time, and since they had both regained consciousness after being transferred to the _Chimaera_ Ezra hadn’t gone more than a few feet from his side.

Kanan arched an eyebrow. “Including putting Sabine’s hair dye in Zeb’s shampoo bottle that time?”

Ezra snorted out surprised laughter. “Okay, not _everything_. That was amazing.”

“Not for Zeb.” Kanan hadn’t been able to see the results, but apparently they had been impressive.

“Listen, that was a very flattering color on him. It matched his eyes.”

He felt Ezra’s brief smile as a reassuring murmur in the Force, which was the effect he had been hoping for. It was gone a moment later as Ezra dropped his chin back to his knees, his arms wrapped around his legs. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Kanan told him.

“Uh, we’re in a prison cell, so I really think I do.” Ezra knocked his forehead against his knees and added miserably, “They were _right there_ , Kanan. We were right there! And everything just…it all just went to blazes in a handbasket.”

Kanan put a hand on his back and said, “None of that was your fault, Ezra. All of us underestimated the Empire’s defenses.”

He pushed the memory of Hera screaming out of his mind with effort, because dwelling on it now wouldn’t do either of them any good. He could feel something in the Force, a disturbance, maybe, or even something familiar, but between the knock to the head and the general distress Ezra was leaking it wasn’t something he could pinpoint at the moment. It could as easily be his own distress, since he wasn’t half as calm about their situation as he was trying to make Ezra think he was. They could really only deal with one of them panicking at a time, and Kanan knew that his shielding was too good for Ezra to realize otherwise.

“I’m the one who dumped us in the middle of an Imperial camp,” Ezra said bitterly. He dug his fingers into his overlong hair, the scars on his palms leaving a faint shimmering aftereffect that even Kanan’s ruined eyes could see, like contrails made out of light. Or shadow. “I should have –”

“Done what?”

“I don’t know. Something. There has to have been a way to check, to – to control it. I should have figured it out.”

“I really didn’t get the impression that that place came with a user manual,” Kanan said mildly. His mind shied away from the impossibility of the World Between Worlds like a sore tooth, like it was something that his waking consciousness wasn’t capable of understanding, Jedi Knight or not. He had the vague impression that he might have begun to be able to sort through it in a deep enough meditative trance, but there was no chance of reaching one of those here and now, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to risk it while he was still in Imperial custody. The Inquisitors might have been gone – maybe, at this point he didn’t want to put money on it – but Darth Vader was still around, and whatever else the Emperor had tucked up his sleeves.

Ezra dropped his forehead back against his knees again. “I should have figured it out,” he repeated. “And something happened – time passed. I don’t know. Sabine looked different.”

“Well, that’s not exactly –”

“Her armor was all scratched up. I’ve never seen her let it get that bad. I thought we’d just – I don’t know. I thought we’d go through the door, the gate, the – whatever it was – and we’d be back when we – when I – left. But that’s not what happened and I don’t understand _why_.” Ezra’s voice rose in frustration until the last word came out nearly as a wail, then he jerked upright and slapped a hand over his mouth, glancing towards the door as if he was afraid of being overheard.

There were Noghri outside the door, Kanan knew; he could sense them there, along with stormtroopers stationed both inside and outside the detention area. Beyond _that_ were the other forty-six thousand-odd crew, stormtroopers, and other personnel onboard the _Chimaera_ , unless they had taken particularly bad casualties in however long he and Ezra had been gone, in which case it might be knocked down to a mere forty-five thousand. They were lucky there weren’t actually Noghri in the room with them and that they weren’t both locked into interrogation frames for the duration of the trip. Kanan didn’t know enough about Noghri to know if their hearing was as good as their sense of smell, if they could hear Ezra and Kanan talking despite the heavy blast door between them. Not that it really mattered, since the cell was definitely under surveillance anyway.

“You know that the Force doesn’t always work in ways that we’re capable of understanding,” Kanan told Ezra gently.

Ezra huffed out a weary sigh that ended in something that was almost a laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I know.” He combed his fingers absently through his rumpled hair, then let his forehead fall forward against his knees again.

Kanan ran a hand over his jaw, a day’s worth of stubble pricking at his palm. It felt odd to be clean-shaven and short-haired again after so many years and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it now, though at the moment it was the least of his worries.

Ezra crept another a couple inches closer to him along the bench, as if he couldn’t bear to be too far away from Kanan for more than a few minutes. Kanan put an arm around his shoulders and Ezra leaned heavily against him, his body going slack with weariness. Kanan didn’t know how long he had been awake before – before. But Ezra had clearly been going for a while now, and the hours they had spent in transit from the temple to Capital City didn’t really count against that.

“You might as well get some sleep,” Kanan told him quietly, and felt Ezra raise his gaze towards him, studying his expression with narrow-eyed concentration to be certain he really meant it. “We’re not going to get to Coruscant any time soon, and I doubt they’re going to let us out of this cell for a tour.”

Ezra hesitated. “I don’t want to –”

Kanan didn’t need the Force to guess what was on his mind. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.

Ezra’s shoulders slumped. “This is _not_ how I thought I’d end my day when I woke up this morning,” he complained.

Kanan cocked an eyebrow at him. “Imagine how I feel.”

He felt Ezra’s flush. “Yeah, well, I –” He shut his mouth on the next words, but Kanan heard them reverberate in the Force anyway. _It was my fault._

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kanan told him firmly. “Don’t you ever think that.”

“It was my plan,” Ezra said bitterly.

“If you’re going to blame anyone, blame Governor Pryce. And it doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

“We’re in this cell.”

“Well, I wasn’t planning on staying here forever,” Kanan said. “Just get some rest, Ezra. We’ll work it out later.”

Ezra grumbled under his breath, but slumped wearily against Kanan’s shoulder anyway. Kanan probably should have taken his own advice and tried to sleep – the last time he had done so had been before the failed rebel assault on Lothal two days ago, which was now apparently some months ago – but at the moment he didn’t particularly like the idea of both of them being asleep at the same time. Not that he thought that the Empire was going to do anything to take advantage of that, but – he just didn’t like the idea of it, no matter how tired he was. On the other hand, he also knew that after two days awake, he wasn’t going to be able to put up much of a fight if one or more of the Noghri outside decided to come in and rough him up.

Ezra was already asleep, drooling into the shoulder of Kanan’s shirt. Kanan sighed and didn’t bother to dislodge him, just stretched his legs out and leaned his head back against the hard metal wall behind him. He had a bad moment of wondering if he would disappear between waking and dreaming, worrying that what Ezra had done wasn’t permanent, before he pushed the concern aside with a force of will and shut his eyes. If that was the will of the Force, then there was nothing he was able to do about it, now or later. And while he couldn’t pretend to know the will of the Force, he thought that if the Force hadn’t wanted him here, then it wouldn’t have allowed Ezra to make it happen. He was still a Jedi. He was still the Force made flesh. At this point whether or not he continued to occupy that flesh was beyond him.

* * *

The _Ghost_ felt haunted.

Ahsoka splashed water over her face and reached down to turn off the faucet, studying her reflection in the mirror, searching for any sign that the past two years had touched her own body. But the laugh-lines starting to form at the corners of her eyes were exactly the same as they had been the last time she had looked at a mirror; the only minor difference in her reflection was the fading bruise on her forehead and the lightning burns webbing across her side, now bandaged after Rex had spent the better part of half an hour picking bits of melted fabric out of her flesh. Thinking about it at all made her lekku twitch and her montrals tingle, as if searching blindly for an enemy just out of range.

_What did you do, Ezra?_

She wasn’t entirely certain herself, which was what scared her. This was nothing she had ever learned about in the Temple, not even in the Jedi fairy stories that they had been told in the crèche. But there was something familiar about it nevertheless. Ahsoka didn’t want to think about that very hard, not after the past few days; she was sick of things that were uncomfortably familiar.

She dried her hands and stepped out of the refresher, barefoot on the cold metal deck. Rex and Cassian had scared up a change of clothes for her that more or less fit, and between that, solid food, and a shower, Ahsoka felt like a civilized being again and not a tooka that had been dragged backwards through a swamp. Admittedly, it would probably be easier to be a tooka right now.

The _Ghost_ was quiet around her. Ahsoka hadn’t spent much time on the ship before, but now she could feel the absence of its inhabitants like a sore tooth, a faint echo of the way that any site occupied for an extended period of time by a Force-user reverberated with the Force. Kanan had lived here for the better part of a decade; that was long enough, apparently. There was a faint edge of confusion to it, like the shadow of near-sentience the ship had gained over the years couldn’t understand why it had been abandoned by its captain and crew. It left Ahsoka somewhat disquieted; the Jedi Temple on Coruscant had been like this, only hugely magnified by millennia of occupation by thousands of Jedi, but that was the Jedi Temple. The outpost temples she had visited, including the one on Lothal, had all borne that same sense of semi-sentience; even the Sith temple on Malachor had felt like that despite centuries or millennia of abandonment. But those were all temples, all of them built over vergences in the Force and occupied by Force-users for time out of mind. Ahsoka hadn’t known that it was possible for something as ordinary as a starship, home to one Jedi – then two – to gain even a little of that. Jedi never stayed in one place that long, not places that weren’t already sacred to them.

She shook her head, her skin prickling with the strangeness of it. As she made her way down the corridor towards the cockpit she paused to lay her hands briefly on each cabin door as she passed it, not knowing what she expected to find. The first two – Sabine’s and Zeb and Ezra’s rooms – sat quietly to her searching awareness, but something inside Kanan’s cabin jangled her nerves and sent her flinching back. Not pain, precisely, but not something she had expected to find either.

Ahsoka cast a quick glance around, then touched the door control and stepped inside, letting the door slide shut behind her. The lights came sluggishly on as she glanced around, not certain what she was looking for until her gaze fell on the narrow shelf set into the wall. Shock ran through her from montrals to toes.

She hadn’t even known you _could_ break a holocron.

Her heart was pounding painfully in her throat as she stepped over to the shelf, stretching one hand out and then snatching it back before her fingers could brush the fragments of crystal and metal. Even broken, the Force still reverberated through them.

Ahsoka forced her breath to calmness and reached out again, but this time didn’t try to touch the shattered fragments. What remained of Kanan’s holocron recognized and acknowledged her; she caught a quick flicker of something that was _almost_ an image and _almost_ sound through the Force, but nothing she could clearly identify. The other holocron –

For an instant she felt it reach out to envelop her, seizing at arms and legs and lekku like a drowning creature.

Ahsoka threw herself backwards with a yelp, stumbling into the meditation cushion as she stared wide-eyed at the broken red and gold fragments. The blasted thing was _broken_ ; it wasn’t supposed to be able to do that. And Kanan had just been sleeping with it here in his room for who knew how long –

“He’s dead now.”

She looked up, startled; she hadn’t heard the door slide open. Rex was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, looking at her with concern.

Ahsoka pressed a hand to her chest, trying to calm her harried breath. “Maul?” she said, just to be certain, and Rex nodded. “How? Kanan?” When he shook his head, she added doubtfully, “Ezra?”

For someone without the formal training of the Temple, Ezra was very skilled; Kanan had done a good job with him. But Ahsoka had fought Maul more than once, and she knew that there was no way Ezra would be able to stand against him in a fight for more than a few heartbeats.

“Maybe,” Rex said slowly, “but I don’t think so.” He moved a little further into the room, his gaze flicking thoughtfully around the sparse, neatly-ordered space as if searching for enemies even here. “The kid ran off to Tatooine a few months before – well – he had some harebrained idea that General Kenobi was alive and that Maul was going after him. He came back with Maul’s ship – one of those Mandalorian things. It’s around here somewhere.”

Ahsoka stared at him. “Obi-Wan’s dead.”

Rex looked uneasy. “That’s what Senator Organa said the first time the kid brought it up.”

“Bail wouldn’t lie about that,” Ahsoka said slowly, but she found herself thinking back to every time she had ever interacted with Bail Organa, every side comment she had made to him about Obi-Wan or Padmé or – or Anakin.

Anakin.

Ahsoka felt herself begin to shake.

Rex crossed the room in three quick strides and put an arm around her shoulders; Ahsoka turned her face against his chest and cried, cried as she hadn’t let herself do on Malachor or on the way back to Yavin or in the World Between Worlds. She didn’t know if he guessed why or even if he knew already, but he didn’t say anything, just held her as she wept for someone already long dead and beyond saving.

Obi-Wan Kenobi had to be dead. He would never have allowed Anakin to come to – that.

They were all dead.

And there was no undoing that.

Maybe eighteen years ago there might have been, but not today, not after all this time, and Ahsoka knew better than to think herself capable of it. Whatever Ezra had done, she couldn’t – wouldn’t – repeat it.

She pulled away from Rex finally and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Did Mon Mothma agree?” she asked, not wanting to talk about it.

“No,” Rex said, which was about what Ahsoka had been expecting. “But we’re going anyway.”

“We who?”

“Alek’s coming along – Kallus, you met him today. And Wedge Antilles.”

Ahsoka stared at him blankly. “Who?”

“After your time. One of the old Phoenix Squadron pilots; he was on a mission when Hera came back and made her pitch to Senator Mothma, or he would have gone with her to Lothal. I don’t think he’s ever forgiven himself for not being there. So he’s coming. Good kid. You’ll like him.”

Ahsoka made herself smile. “Has he ever been to Coruscant?”

Rex scratched at his beard and said, “I don’t think so, but Alek was born and bred there. And having an ex-ISB agent along might be a good thing.” He arched an eyebrow in a question and added, “But if you don’t want either of them, I’ll tell them that and they can stay here.”

“No,” Ahsoka said slowly, “I trust your judgment.” She sighed, looking across the room at the shattered holocrons, now innocently glinting in the room’s artificial lights. “I think we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

* * *

Hera was definitely rethinking the wisdom of this plan by the time Sabine reappeared. She and Zeb had passed an uneasy night cycle in the narrow confines of the TIE, trading off four hour watches so that they weren’t both sleeping at the same time. In Hera’s case, there hadn’t been much sleep involved. Being pregnant wasn’t as uncomfortable for her as she had heard it was for human women, but that didn’t mean that it was an experience she was particularly enjoying, especially when it involved being locked in a metal ball with a Lasat. Zeb was a friend, but he was also extremely fragrant, especially in close quarters, and Hera’s at the moment overly sensitive nose was protesting.

Chopper had left just after the ship’s shift change, so that none of the deck crew realized that he hadn’t been there before. C1 units were hardly Imperial standard these days – though there were still a few in circulation – but most people never looked past the paint job. Hera had watched him leave the deck through the TIE’s viewport, her heart in her throat the entire time. None of the deck crew had seemed to notice anything amiss, but that didn’t mean that no one else on the _Chimaera_ wouldn’t. Hera knew she couldn’t bear to lose Chopper on top of everything else right now, and with him and Sabine both out there – with Kanan and Ezra out there –

Hera didn’t usually let herself get overwhelmed, but right now, with everything balanced on a knife edge, it felt impossible not to be.

Zeb nudged her with one foot, and when Hera glanced up at him, jerked his head towards the viewport. Hera pushed carefully up onto her knees and peered around the pilot’s seat to see Sabine headed towards them, Chopper trailing behind her like one of the other astromechs – mostly R2 units – scattered around the hangar deck, helping pilots or mechanics with the infinite amount of daily upkeep starfighters, shuttles, and gunships required to stay in good condition. Hera had seen enough in the past ten hours or so to know that Thrawn’s crew never let anything slip, not even for an instant.

Sabine wheeled a ladder over to the TIE, moving leisurely and without hurry, then popped the top and dropped inside. Chopper followed her immediately, and Hera and Zeb both drew their legs back so that he had somewhere to land. It made the already cramped cockpit even more tightly packed, but having them both here made Hera breathe easier. Sabine closed the canopy, ostentatiously produced a toolkit for anyone watching through the viewport, then turned the pilot’s chair around and let the toolkit fall back to her lap.

“Well?” Zeb demanded even before she had drawn breath to speak.

“They’re in the brig,” Sabine said. “Or if they’re not, then someone else who rates a couple of Noghri guards is, and I’m pretty sure they’re the only ones who qualify. I didn’t want to get too close in case they smelled me.”

Zeb frowned in thought over that. “Hard on a big ship like this,” he said slowly. “Lots of people, lots of scents.”

“Yeah, but there aren’t a lot of people down in the detention center,” Sabine pointed out. “We’re lucky they haven’t come up here; they’d definitely smell you.”

“Hey,” Zeb protested.

Sabine gave him a pointed look, and Zeb subsided, grumbling to himself.

“How many Noghri?” Hera asked.

Sabine sat back, fiddling with the toolkit on her lap. “Two that I saw, but I bet there are more somewhere onboard, since Rukh wasn’t one of them. They’re just stationed outside one cell; they must have Kanan and Ezra in there together.”

“You think they can get out on their own?” Zeb asked, looking between Sabine and Hera for a response.

“They got beat up pretty bad on Lothal,” Sabine said slowly. “And even if they can get out of that cell, there’s nowhere to go. I don’t think they’ll try anything until they’re onworld.”

“Or at least out of hyperspace,” Hera added. She pulled her knees up again, trying not to think about the fact that Kanan was so close, but still completely out of reach. She hoped that he wasn’t badly hurt; she hadn’t been able to see much of what had happened on Lothal after Sabine had dragged her away, just remembered the sight of Kanan dropping like a puppet with its strings cut after Rukh had struck him. If he _was_ hurt, then surely the Imperials would have him in the medical bay, albeit under heavy guard; they wanted him alive.

“Are you sure they’re both in the detention center?” she had to ask Sabine. “Did you check the medbay?”

Sabine nodded. “I went up to get some painkillers. They’re not there. So they have to both be in the brig.”

Hera nodded slowly, fighting back disappointment. The medbay would have been easier to break into than the detention center, but it would have still left them with the same problem. In hyperspace, there was nowhere to go.

“ _Do_ we have a plan?” Sabine asked her. “The _Chimaera_ ’s not going to make planetfall; we’ll have to steal a shuttle to get off, and that will set off alarms. Or go down in this thing.”

“That one is probably the best option,” Hera said. She rubbed at her forehead, trying to make herself think, but there were just too many variables right now. “Unless we can stow away on the shuttle they’re planning to transport Kanan and Ezra on. Then we could just disable the guards and fly away –”

Chopper made known his opinion of the likelihood of _that_ happening.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, buddy,” Hera told him dryly.

“He’s right, though,” Sabine said wearily. “Even if we could get you two out of here without the hangar cams noticing and transmitting it to internal security, we still don’t know which shuttle they’ll use.” She twisted around to peer out the viewport at the shuttles docked along one side of the hangar, then let out her breath. “Chop and I could try sabotaging all but one, but –”

“But that will raise suspicion,” Hera finished for her. She massaged her temples again, and said, “Try to find out what you can, but don’t do anything, um –”

“Stupid?” Zeb suggested.

“Hey!”

“– rash,” Hera finished. “Not that Zeb and I wouldn’t rescue you too, but it would make things more complicated.”

Sabine nodded with obvious reluctance; she had clearly been turning over her own thoughts for how to get Kanan and Ezra out, but if she had had a better idea than Hera, she would have offered it.

“Chopper?” Hera asked the droid. “Did you find anything else out?”

He grumbled something about how ungrateful she was to wait until _now_ to ask him that, which Hera ignored, waiting patiently until he finally gave her something other than complaints.

“What?” Sabine said, staring at him in alarm. “You didn’t mention that before!”

“What?” Zeb echoed. “What he did say?”

“He says that Governor Pryce and Minister Hydan are both listed on the passenger manifest,” Hera translated. “The Emperor must be summoning them back to Coruscant to explain – well, to explain what happened.”

“Good luck with _that_ ,” Zeb snorted.

“Make sure they don’t see you,” Hera told Sabine.

“Yeah, no problem with that,” she said.

Chopper added something else, and they all looked at him with concern – mostly with confusion in Zeb’s case, but there was concern in there somewhere.

“That’s interesting,” Hera said thoughtfully. “That order must have come in from the Emperor too, because from what I know of Commodore Faro she wouldn’t take that kind of initiative on her own without a good reason.” Especially with Thrawn’s and by extension her own status with the Emperor resting on a razor’s edge. Rumor had it that Faro had been transferred away from the _Chimaera_ and promoted to a fleet command of her own before the promotion had been rescinded and she had been returned to the _Chimaera_. From what Hera knew of the Imperial Admiralty, that must have been a rebuke of Thrawn’s inability to pacify Lothal, just like the Navy’s unwillingness to provide ships or personnel to replace those lost in combat over the past five months.

“Locking up an Imperial minister and a governor?” Sabine said, shaking her head. “Or confining them to quarters, anyway, which is about the same thing. The Emperor must think they’ve been holding out on him. I can’t think of how we can use that, though.”

Hera had to concur.

“We’ve got about another six hours before we get to Coruscant,” Sabine said. “We’re making pretty good time. I’ll try to find out what I can, but –”

Hera felt her jaw tighten, but admitted, “I don’t know that there’s much we’ll be able to do until we’re out of hyperspace, and then we’ll have to move fast.”

Sabine nodded. “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” she said. She glanced around again, then straightened, leaving the toolkit behind on the scene as she reached up to the pop the canopy. Hera and Zeb both leaned back against the cockpit walls as Sabine pulled herself out of the ship, Chopper propelling himself upwards after her. A moment later the hatch shut behind them, once again leaving Hera and Zeb entombed in the TIE fighter.

* * *

“Ahsoka, may I have a word?”

Ahsoka had been on her way back up to the _Ghost_ ’s cockpit, but at the sound of Mon Mothma’s voice she slid back down the ladder to land on the deck of the hold with a jolt that made her wince from toes to montrals. Ahsoka staggered and caught herself with a hand on the ladder, promising herself that she could get some real rest during the trip from Yavin to Coruscant.

The senator – former senator, she reminded herself, though apparently she was still using the title – was standing at the foot of the _Ghost_ ’s ramp, waiting politely outside rather than entering the ship without permission. Ahsoka went down the ramp to join her instead of gesturing her inside, conscious of the fact that this was not, in fact, her ship, and hoping that Mon Mothma didn’t take it as an insult.

The other woman glanced up at the ship, but didn’t remark on it. Ahsoka tucked her hands behind her back and said, “What can I do for you, Senator?”

Mon Mothma considered the _Ghost_ for a few moments more, as if dwelling on its missing crew, then turned her attention back to Ahsoka and said, “I would like to ask you not to go on this mission you’ve assigned yourself.”

“That’s not an option,” Ahsoka said.

“I understand that you feel it to be necessary, but under the circumstances leaving Yavin is not wise. Your situation is certainly unique, but General Draven wants to speak with you, as do Senator Organa and General Cracken; they’re both en route here now. You understand how your reappearance here looks to us, after all this time.”

“And if I were anyone else, I’d be in a cell right now?” Ahsoka said, raising a brow. “Or at least in a locked room.”

Mon Mothma met her gaze evenly and said, “Yes.”

Ahsoka had to appreciate her candor, but she had to respond to it with her own, too. “I don’t take orders from you, Senator,” she said. “There’s a reason I never took an official position in the Alliance. You don’t have the right to give me orders.”

“I could have you held here,” Mon Mothma said.

She hadn’t brought a security team with her that Ahsoka could sense, so Ahsoka wasn’t taking the threat seriously at the moment. “You could try,” she said. “But that would be a bad idea. Both for your men’s continued health and for the galaxy.”

For the first time Mon Mothma’s serene calm broke a little to reveal the frustration Ahsoka had felt bubbling up around her. “These are not the Clone Wars,” she said. “The Jedi are dead, Ahsoka – all of them. Their fire has gone out of the galaxy. We can’t spare the resources to fight some – some _crusade_ on nothing but your say-so; we have real threats to deal with, things like Grand Admiral Thrawn’s TIE Defenders or this battle station of Moff Tarkin’s Saw Gerrera has been chasing after. The Empire has its fingers in many pots, all of them weapons aimed at our destruction, but one thing it does not have is the ability to – to undo time, to unravel the fabric of the universe.” She stumbled over the words, like she couldn’t quite believe them herself, and went on quickly, “We live in the real world, Ahsoka. That is where we have to fight our battles, not chasing after mists and ghosts.” 

“That is where you have to fight _your_ battles,” Ahsoka corrected her. “You couldn’t do this. Neither could Bail or Draven or Ackbar, any of your other people. There are some battles that only someone with the power of the Force can even be truly aware of, let alone fight. And there is no one else.”

Mon Mothma’s mouth tightened as if she was going to protest that, but she remained silent.

Ahsoka unclasped her hands and folded her arms across her chest instead. She didn’t want to disrespect Mon Mothma if she could avoid it, but she didn’t know how much time she had to get to Coruscant. If she had known about Ezra and Kanan when Rex had picked her up on Malachor, she would have made him go straight there instead of coming to Yavin first.

Finally, Mon Mothma said, “I still think this is a fool’s errand, Ahsoka.”

“If I’m wrong and go anyway, then you lose nothing,” Ahsoka told her. “If I’m right and do nothing, then we lose everything.”

Mon Mothma’s mouth compressed even further. “You said you don’t take orders from me,” she said, “but the people you want to take with you do. I could order them to remain here.”

“Two Imperial defectors and one of the only clone troopers in the galaxy who didn’t carry out Order 66?” Ahsoka questioned. “With all due respect, Senator, I don’t think any of them are inclined to follow orders just because they’re orders.”

Mon Mothma sighed, conceding defeat on that front. “Perhaps not. But you know that the Alliance cannot spare anyone.”

“Then why did you let Ezra and the others go to Lothal in the first place?” Ahsoka asked, genuinely curious. “Or Hera return with a squadron of X-wings?”

The senator’s gaze cut briefly sideways, but Ahsoka didn’t get the impression that she was trying to conceal anything from her, just thinking over the best way to frame it with a politician’s canniness. “General Syndulla presented a convincing argument about the threat that Admiral Thrawn’s TIE Defender factory presented. Production _was_ delayed for a time,” she admitted, “but from what we’ve been able to determine, whatever damage was done by General Syndulla or by the local partisans – we’re not sure which – has been repaired and they have either begun or are about to begin full production again. So it was ultimately a waste of resources.”

_Resources_ , Ahsoka thought bitterly; she’d gotten a run-down from Rex on everyone and everything they had lost, chief among them Kanan and Ezra. Jedi hadn’t been replaceable during the Clone Wars; they certainly weren’t now. But they did have to be used to do any good. “And what would it have done to the Alliance if production had gone on as originally scheduled?”

“We don’t deal in hypotheticals,” Mon Mothma said firmly. “As for your other question…” She sighed. “Most people who join the Alliance – the _Alliance_ , and not merely the Rebellion – do so because they believe in the greater cause. Because they _can_ walk away from their homes or their families, or because they have been left with nothing to return to. People who are not willing to make that sacrifice can have difficulty understanding what it is we’re fighting for really.”

“In other words,” Ahsoka said, “you thought Ezra was a little too concerned about his homeworld.”

Mon Mothma frowned, apparently troubled by the accusation. “Lothal has the potential to become a major manufacturing center,” she said finally. “Even without the TIE Defender factory, disrupting or destroying the planet’s manufacturing capability would have a temporary negative impact on –”

Ahsoka’s mouth twisted. “Yes, yes, it’s strategically important. I’ve heard all the arguments – now _and_ during the Clone Wars. That part doesn’t change.” _Some other things don’t either_ , she added silently to herself, but didn’t voice the words. She had never had all that much interaction with Mon Mothma before, since Bail Organa had always been her main contact among the upper echelons of the Rebel Alliance’s political side. During the Clone Wars she had ever only known her – been aware of her, really, she still wasn’t certain if they had ever even been in the same room – as one of Padmé’s friends.

Ahsoka had made that kind of call herself more times than she cared to think about. But unlike Mon Mothma, she had actually been in the field – quite literally on the battlefield, as well as doing all that lurking about in dark alleys and on rooftops and in seedy cantinas. She knew what she was doing when she made that kind of call and who was getting sacrificed. Unless things had changed drastically on Chandrila or in the Senate since the last time she had spoken with Mon Mothma – about four months before she had gone to Malachor – then the other woman didn’t. Not really.

“You disapprove,” Mon Mothma said.

“I didn’t say that.” Ahsoka had already found out from Rex that the Rebels had made no more than cursory attempts to get in touch with Hera or whatever remained of the native Lothal resistance cell – they hadn’t even been certain that anyone was left alive until the reports of today’s altercation had been intercepted. “Regardless of what happened five months ago, I do need to go to Coruscant, Senator. If we’re lucky, it will be a false alarm and we can turn around and come right back. But if it’s not, then I have to be there.” She arched her brows. “And if we’re very lucky, I can even bring Kanan and Ezra back.”

Assuming that it _was_ Kanan Ezra had brought back. Assuming it was even really Ezra at all. Ahsoka wasn’t going to tell Mon Mothma any of that, though. She didn’t even know if she wanted to tell Rex that.

Mon Mothma’s expression clearly said what she thought about _that_ particular possibility.

Over her shoulder, Ahsoka saw Rex approaching with Kallus and another man she didn’t recognize – presumably the pilot Rex had said would be joining them, Wedge Antilles. Mon Mothma saw her looking and turned to see what had caught her attention. Her mouth went tight again, but she stepped back as the three men joined them.

“Senator,” Rex greeted her. The other two men saluted, their expressions cautious.

“Gentlemen,” Mon Mothma said. She surveyed them all, then nodded graciously and said, “I hope you find what you’re looking for, Ahsoka. I’ll give Senator Organa your regards.”

“Thank you, Senator,” Ahsoka said. “If the Force is with us, this won’t take long.”

Mon Mothma said, “Then may the Force be with you.”

* * *

Kanan snapped awake as the _Chimaera_ dropped out of hyperspace, adrenaline sparking through his body. Ezra jerked upright, startled more by his sudden movement than by the ship’s. He put out a hand to grab at Kanan’s arm as if making certain he was still there and that he hadn’t vanished while they were both asleep, then said groggily, “What – what happened?”

“We’ve reached Coruscant,” Kanan said.

Ezra scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his scarred hands, making Kanan turn his head aside so that the residue of the scarring didn’t distract him. He actually could see it, even in this world, and not just with the Force. Nothing else, though.

“That’s – that’s not good,” Ezra said, clearly still trying to wake up the rest of the way. He finally gave up the attempt and sank back, pulling his feet up onto the bench and turning his attention towards the hatch in front of them as if it held the answer to all their questions. After a moment he shook his head rapidly and then ran his fingers through his hair, distracted. Then he frowned. “Do you feel that?”

Mostly what Kanan was feeling was dread, along with the memory of the last time he had been in the Coruscant system, almost eighteen years ago now. He hadn’t expected to ever return.

He hadn’t expected to ever do anything again.

Ezra was still staring at the door with such nervous intensity that Kanan could feel it flooding the surface of the Force. He laid a hand on Ezra’s shoulder to calm him and let his own perceptions roll outwards, trying to keep his mind open despite his instinct to wall himself off from the residue of what had happened on Coruscant eighteen years ago. Even this far out from the planet’s gravity well he had sensed it as soon as they had dropped out of hyperspace, the thing he had spent more than half a lifetime pretending he couldn’t still feel reverberating backwards and forwards through time and space – an open wound shot through the Force that would never fully heal. Ezra had asked him about it once without realizing what it was and the realization had taken Kanan’s breath away, that even after all this time someone who had no real connection to the Order as it had been in its dying could still sense it.

He gritted his teeth against the wave of agony that rose up in the Force as he reached outwards, knowing that in this one thing he would always be more sensitive to Ezra, because he _had_ been a Jedi then, and it had been his people dying – had nearly been him. With an effort, he filtered that out, allowed it to recede to nothing more than background static on the line. He couldn’t get rid of it entirely, but even as he flinched away from it, he allowed himself to accept it, take it inside himself and become part of him. It was easier than Kanan had thought it would be, because it _was_ part of him. It was the universal truth that had made him what and who he was, that had taken the boy he had been and the man he could have been and turned him into what he was now. Not a better man. Not a worse man. But not the same man, either.

Not for the first time he thought that he wasn’t sure he would like the man Caleb Dume would have grown up to be, but for the first time in so long that it felt like stretching a long-disused set of muscles he thought that it was a shame he would never know.

He set the thought aside with an effort. For a moment he was aware only of the bustle of life on the _Chimaera_ , then his mind caught and sorted through it with the ease of long practice, one of the earliest skills younglings learned so that they weren’t overwhelmed by the immensity of life conveyed by the Force. It was a necessity of growing up on Coruscant; living on the ecumenopolis allowed younglings to develop it naturally before they were taught to use it deliberately.

More than forty thousand minds on the _Chimaera_ , only a handful even half-familiar, and then –

“No,” Kanan said out loud, his eyes snapping open. He hadn’t been aware of closing them, but that part barely mattered anyway. “How did they even get onboard?”

“Bet we’ll hear all about it,” Ezra said with blissful delight.

_Well, at least we’ll all die together_ , Kanan thought, not as certain as Ezra in his team’s not inconsiderable abilities, at least on this particular occasion. _Or worse._ The worse was what he was afraid of.

With his attention still turned outwards he was aware of the stormtroopers approaching even before the hatch slid open. Kanan pulled his awareness back into his body with an effort, relieved not to be so exposed to the shadow of the past, and raised his head just as the bolts clicked back.

Two Noghri preceded the stormtroopers in, lurking by the stairs with their electrostaffs in their hands. Kanan sensed the stormtroopers’ uneasiness around them as they passed by them. He felt Ezra flick a glance at him in a silent question, but all Kanan did was stand up, lifting his hands so that the stormtroopers could slap binders down over his wrists. Kanan touched them experimentally with his mind, recognizing the mechanism as one he could manipulate, but didn’t do so. Not now, not when they were already in a cell with armed men staring them down.

Ezra took his cue from Kanan and neither fought nor protested, just let the binders be put on him. He shifted uneasily under their weight and the stormtroopers’ sidelong glances, his scarred hands clenching and unclenching. The Imperial Navy officer standing in the entrance to the cell regarded them with what read to Kanan as mostly neutral unease and a little fear, the latter of which was the emotion he had grown accustomed to from Imperials faced with Jedi for the first time. On this occasion it was tinged with something else, though, and he supposed under the circumstances he couldn’t blame her. He was afraid too, and likely for some of the same reasons.

The stormtroopers led them out of the cell and into the corridor outside. The Noghri followed, then with some maneuvering one of them took up a position near the front of their little cavalcade, while the other took the rear. The naval officer flicked a nervous glance at them and then apparently decided to ignore them entirely, striding on ahead. Kanan couldn’t tell if she was more disconcerted by the Jedi or the Noghri.

The trip down to the hangar bay seemed to take an interminable amount of time. Kanan’s nerves were jangling almost to distraction by the time they reached the doors and started the long trek across what felt like a kilometer of deck towards the line of docked Lambda shuttles. Halfway there he paused – not in step, not in any way that the Imperials surrounding him noticed, but he staggered for an instant in his own mind, trying and failing to come to terms with what he had just felt. He didn’t turn his head the way he might have done before, already knowing that there was nothing to see. _Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea_ –

Ezra didn’t react either, which Kanan was grateful for, though he didn’t know if it was because Ezra hadn’t sensed them or if he had finally learned subtlety. He let his awareness move outwards slightly, reaching towards the Noghri – not trying to affect their minds, but only an attempt to discover if they were aware of the intruders. Neither one seemed to be reacting, which didn’t let Kanan relax at all under the circumstances, but it was more of a relief than both of them bounding across the hangar bay would have been.

The sound of the footsteps of the troopers in front of him changed as they moved from the hangar deck to the ramp of one of the Lambdas. The Noghri who had been in the lead didn’t accompany them, just stepped back out of the way by the bottom of the ramp. Kanan hesitated for an instant, but a rough shove between his shoulder blades propelled him forward into the belly of the ship. He was strapped into a jump seat, his hands manacled to the restraints affixed to the seat – typically meant for turbulence, but just as effective for prisoner transport. Ezra followed him in a moment later and was forced into a seat across from Kanan. Stormtroopers flanked them both, but neither of the Noghri entered the shuttle. The naval officer passed them without looking and climbed up into the cockpit, like she couldn’t bear the idea of being near either of them.

Kanan chewed his lip, waiting for the sound of the hatch closing, but it didn’t come. Then more people entered the shuttle and an unfamiliar man’s voice said, “Truly fascinating!”

“Oh,” Ezra said, sounding disgusted. “It’s you.”

“Ezra Bridger and Caleb Dume – positively remarkable.”

Kanan arched his eyebrows, irritated, but didn’t remark on it. It took him a moment to realize that he had heard the voice before – the Imperial minister in charge of the excavation at the temple, when they had been there only this morning. Yesterday morning, maybe; time had taken on an uncertain, syrupy quality, stretched out by lack of sleep and adrenaline, not to mention the apparent time travel. Or resurrection, which was still something Kanan didn’t care to think about. He couldn’t remember the man’s name and didn’t particularly care to try.

Governor Pryce was with him, along with another couple of stormtroopers, but she didn’t say anything to either of them, her disdain radiating so strongly through the Force that it almost eclipsed the minister’s ghoulish delight. She strode past them and sat as far away from Ezra and Kanan as she could manage, which wasn’t very; Lambdas weren’t that big, after all. The minister tried to sit by them but was steered away by the stormtroopers to a seat at the far end of the ship. Kanan was interested to note that while neither Pryce nor the minister were restrained, they were also accompanied by troopers in a way that suggested “guard” rather than “honor escort.” Ezra noticed too, flicking an interested glance at Kanan, but he was smart enough not to say anything about it. Kanan shrugged in response and slumped back against the seat, not interested in putting up a strong face about their situation until it was going to count. There was only one being on Coruscant that mattered right now. Everyone else was just background noise.

The hatch closed up behind them as all the stormtroopers either settled themselves into the remaining seats or remained standing. Ezra shifted uneasily, clearly considering trying to break free of his restraints before Kanan shook his head slightly in warning. He wouldn’t be able to get loose before one of the troopers stunned him, which wouldn’t even provide enough of a diversion for Kanan to get free and disable everyone on the ship. He was good. He wasn’t that good, not right now.

Beneath him, he felt the shuttle’s engines rumble to life and gritted his teeth against his sudden surge of fear, doing his best not to show it. A moment later the ship lifted up and slid forward, moving through the magnetic containment shield out of the _Chimaera_ ’s hangar and into open space, down towards the planet below. The planet Kanan had spent his entire adult life and most of his teenage years swearing to never return to. The planet where he had probably been born and where he had spent his childhood before the war had cut it short. The planet where everyone he had ever known had died and where his entire world had burned to ash in the course of a single night.

He had never wanted to go back to Coruscant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With grateful thanks to Stella, Kablob, Snacky, and Reena_Jenkins for beta services, hand-holding, and emotional support.
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two. I am currently working two chapters ahead.
> 
> There is currently a much longer period between chapters because I'm a full time PhD student and I'm doing my comprehensive exams/portfolio this semester, so anything that isn't a book on Roman history is taking a backseat at the moment.


	4. Unsteady Ground

Sabine reached the hangar bay only a few minutes after the shuttle had left, striding across the deck and trying not to look like she was hurrying. Chopper was just behind her, grumbling to himself. No one in the hangar so much as looked at them as Sabine rolled a ladder over to her stolen TIE and then slung herself inside. Chopper followed her in, and Sabine reached up to pull the hatch closed after him.

“They took him – them,” Hera said as soon as the latch shut, the strain evident in her voice.

“I know, I saw them on their way here.” Sabine pulled her TIE pilot’s helmet on but didn’t bother to seal it. She flipped switches to get the engines started, wondering if she would actually be able to make it out of the hangar before the deck officer up in the control station noticed.

TIE fighters could go from a cold start to engines hot in less than two minutes, and Sabine spent all of that worrying, calculating how far the Lambda shuttle could get in that time. There were military bases on-planet, a major prison, orbital stations – and the Imperial Palace. All of them would be difficult to get into, but Sabine was horribly certain that the Imperial Palace was their goal. She had absolutely no idea how they would be able to get into the Imperial Palace, even if one of her distant ancestors had managed to do it back when it was still the Jedi Temple.

 _Maybe I should have hung onto the Darksaber_.

Well, it wasn’t like the thing was a magic key that would be able to get her in, even if Palpatine hadn’t changed all the locks. Most of the time she was happy enough to have it out of her hands and into someone else’s.

Her boards turned green and Sabine hit the thrusters, knocking the ladder aside as she swung the TIE fighter around. There were shouts of alarm from the deck and her comm squealed through her helmet.

 _“TIE CC-15, report. You don’t have clearance to take off,”_ the deck officer said haughtily. _“Where exactly do you think you’re going?”_

“Out,” Sabine told him and triggered the guns, spraying laser bolts across the ranks of docked TIE fighters, TIE Defenders, gunships, and Lambda shuttles. Deck crew and droids dove out of the way and the deck officer shouted incoherently in her ear.

Sabine sent another spray of laser bolts towards the control deck, shattering the transparisteel window, then jerked the TIE around and hurtled forwards towards the magcon shield. Someone on the control deck hit the release for the doors and they began to close; Sabine tipped the TIE onto its side – to Zeb and Chopper’s noisy protests – and shot through the doors before they slammed shut.

“Hera –”

The other woman was already at her side, sliding her hands down below Sabine’s to take the control yoke from her before Sabine released it. She slid into the pilot’s chair as Sabine scrambled off it, pulling her TIE pilot’s helmet off and grabbing for the bag with her armor in it. She didn’t bother trying to change out of her TIE pilot’s uniform, just dragged out her jetpack and her control gauntlet. Sabine had to brace herself between Zeb and the side of the TIE as Hera made a quick adjustment in their course, handling the small, swift starfighter with fine-tuned delicacy even after months out of a cockpit, but managed to get the jetpack on over her pilot’s harness. She stripped off the heavy gloves to get her control gauntlet on over her wrist, flicking her fingers against it to get it turned on and make sure it was still calibrated correctly. At least she had managed to get her jetpack recharged from the stolen transport back on Lothal.

“We’ve got company,” Hera reported. “Everyone, hold on!”

Sabine and Zeb both grabbed for handholds on the inside of the TIE as Chopper locked down his magnetic clamps. Hera sent the TIE spinning sideways, juking and jinking away from the TIEs that Sabine could see as flashes of motion and green laserfire through the viewport. Sabine had no way to be sure, but she suspected they were from the Coruscant sector fleet’s TIE patrol rather than from the _Chimaera_ , which would still be scrambling to get TIEs launched from the ship’s other hangar. They would probably come under fire from the capital ships soon enough too; Sabine didn’t expect their TIE to survive intact all the way down to the surface.

She groped one-handed at the back of the pilot’s chair, couldn’t quite reach it without letting go of her handhold, and kicked the back of the chair instead. Hera yelped, “Sabine!”

“Sorry!” Sabine replied, but she had managed to knock loose what she was looking for. She hooked the toe of her boot through a strap on the case that had just detached from the pilot’s chair and dragged it towards herself until she could crouch down and pick it up, nearly wrenching her arm out of the socket in the process as Hera made another quick correction with the TIE.

She slid it towards Zeb. “Put that on,” she told him.

He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “What?”

“It’s a parachute. You’re probably going to want one unless you’ve learned to fly recently.”

“Excuse me?” Hera said, obviously affronted at the apparent insult to her skill.

“We’re a little outgunned here!” Sabine protested. She fumbled her helmet out of the bag and pulled it on, immediately feeling better, than slung the bag across her chest, making sure that it was closed and none of her armor was going to come spilling out with rough treatment.

“Pessimist,” Hera grumbled, and sent the TIE into a barrel roll, lasers chewing up the ships coming towards them. Another flick of her wrists on the control yoke and Sabine suddenly saw the bulk of the planet coming up towards them at an alarmingly rapid pace in the instants before the viewport lit up with atmospheric reentry. A moment later they entered heavy cloud cover and Hera said breathlessly, “Chop, mark our position and plot a course towards the Imperial Pal –”

The ship rocked as something struck it. Hera swore viciously in Twi’leki, fighting with the control yoke to get them leveled out as Zeb demanded, “What was that?”

It hadn’t been laserfire, Sabine was almost certain. Out of the corner of her eyes, she caught a flash of something in the viewport before Hera managed to veer away from it and said, “We hit something. An animal, maybe, or another ship –”

“Whatever it was, we lost a chunk out of one of our wings,” Hera said tightly. “Chopper, get that plotted fast. Sabine’s right, we’re going to have to bail out, and the closer we are the better.”

Even from inside the little ship’s lightly armored hull Sabine heard the shriek of incoming twin ion engines as the sector fleet’s TIE fighters bore down on them. The rattle in their TIE got worse as Hera pressed it forwards, weaving in and out of rapidly dissipating clouds, then abruptly she swung the TIE around and fired. Zeb whooped at the resultant explosion, the sound overwhelming in the small space.

The sudden motion had apparently been too much for the TIE fighter’s overstressed wing. Sabine felt rather than saw it detach, the starfighter skewing abruptly sideways with the sudden loss. Momentum and the remaining engines continued to carry it forwards, but it was corkscrewing downwards now, a losing battle with gravity. Hera was gripping the control yoke, fighting it in an attempt to level out, her teeth bared in a grimace.

“Chop, how close are we?” Sabine demanded.

Abruptly she had her answer as the cloud cover broke up in front of them, revealing a massive skyscraper. Hera swore and dragged at the control yoke, barely managing to clear the corner of the building rather than smashing into it. But there were more skyscrapers all around them, rising up on either side of the TIE as they plummeted downwards – and Sabine knew that on Coruscant, ground level was a long, _long_ way down.

“There!” Zeb yelled, grabbing the back of Hera’s chair and pointing over her shoulder.

Up ahead, the spires of the Imperial Palace rose towards the sky. More TIE fighters were diverting from their patrol around the Palace – no, not TIE fighters, Sabine realized, magnifying them with her helmet. TIE Strikers, atmospheric craft mostly used by the army for on-planet support.

“Everyone, get ready to bail out,” Hera said through gritted teeth. “Zeb –”

“I got it.” Keeping one foot clamped on the handhold he had been gripping, he scrambled up the side of the TIE and got the hatch open with a rush of air that nearly blew Sabine away. Zeb shouted something that might have had the word “repulsors” in it, but whatever he had said was lost in the roar of the wind. The TIE was definitely heading downwards now; Sabine only hoped that whatever it hit could handle the damage.

Struck by an idea, she released her handhold and was almost blown sideways, but managed to catch hold of the back of Zeb’s belt nevertheless. He jerked in surprise, but Sabine yelled, “Keep going!” directly into his ear as she got herself into a better position on his back, clamping down with her knees on either side of his waist and folding her hands around his chest.

“What about the parachute?” he yelled back.

“You have to actually put it on for it to work!” Sabine shouted; he’d gotten the case open and the parachute out but hadn’t had time to get the harness fixed on properly, and now it hung in a loose white bundle from his waist.

“Now!” Hera yelled.

“What about –”

“I’ll be right behind you!”

 _Yeah, I’ve heard that before_ , Sabine thought, but she supposed in this case they didn’t have a choice. She just held grimly onto Zeb as he pulled himself up out of the TIE, balancing on the top of it with both hands and feet digging into the side of the open hatch.

Sabine glanced up and saw that while the TIEs had broken off, the TIE Strikers were now coming directly at them. She freed one hand and grabbed at the parachute, jerking it free and finding the release with her thumb.

“When I say go, jump!” she shouted in Zeb’s ear, which he twitched in response.

As their TIE continued its erratic path downwards – civilians now scattering out of their way, or standing in the windows of the buildings rising up on either side of them and pointing – Sabine got the parachute pointed the way she wanted. As the nearest TIE Striker adjusted to cover the way that Hera was jerking the TIE around – at least Sabine hoped Hera was doing that on purpose – Sabine hit the release on the parachute and yelled, “Go!”

White fabric billowed up to catch on the TIE Striker’s protruding foils and the pilot jerked the ship sideways in surprise, spinning into the side of a building in an explosion of twisted metal and shattered glass. The other TIE Strikers veered to avoid it as Sabine activated her jetpack as Zeb released his hold on the TIE.

For a moment she thought that her makeshift plan was going to fail and Zeb was going to plummet to his death as she nearly lost her grip on him – he was definitely bellowing in something that was either fear or anger – then she managed to get her hands what she wanted. She could feel her jetpack straining against the unusual amount of weight, since Zeb wasn’t exactly light, but their descent was definitely slowing.

Sabine looked around frantically for somewhere to land, hopefully nearby, and spotted what looked like a wide walkway stretching along the sides of two buildings, nearly large enough to pass for a street if not for the empty air beneath it. Her grip on Zeb made it difficult to steer, but she managed to veer in that direction, arms and legs straining to hold him in place.

Beings had gathered on the walkway to watch the chase. They scattered as Sabine and Zeb plummeted down towards them, Sabine barely managing to release her hold on Zeb before they both hit the metallic surface of the walkway.

Sabine rolled, garnering more bruises as the metal plates of her armor ground into her flesh through the bag still slung around her, and managed to push herself up on her knees. She searched frantically for the TIE, her heart in her throat, and finally saw it plummeting down into the darkness between buildings. It smashed through one of the crisscrossing walkways that seemed to connect the massive sky towers, apparently on fire now as it continued downwards.

“Hera,” Sabine gasped, her heart in her throat as she stumbled to her feet.

“ _Hera!”_ Zeb roared, clearly thinking the same thing as her.

A small shape shot up out of the space between buildings, the roar of his rocket lost as the TIE Strikers went screaming by in pursuit of their prey. Chopper, with Hera clinging to his back, overshot the walkway, then corrected, wavering in mid-air as he swung around. He fired his repulsors just in time to come down with surprising delicacy, though he still scorched the surface of the walkway with his jets as he landed. Hera released Chopper, staggering a little and bracing herself on his dome as she regained her footing.

Chopper was grumbling to himself as Sabine and Zeb reached them, rocking back and forth on his ambulatory struts and trying to pat Hera’s hip with one of his manipulators at the same time. Hera touched a hand to her stomach, then let it drop to her side as Zeb said gruffly, “You all right?”

Hera nodded, leaning down to pull her blaster free of its ankle holster. “That was the easy part,” she said. “Now the fun begins.”

* * *

Wedge Antilles leaned back in the oversized chair bolted to the floor of the _Ghost_ ’s lounge and stretched out his legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankle. The motion made the other three beings in the lounge all look at him; only Alek Kallus was sitting down, while Rex was leaning against the closed hatch with his arms crossed over his chest and the newcomer was standing near him, her hands tucked behind her back.

“So,” Wedge said, “where are we going?”

Kallus gave him a look that suggested he was ashamed to be seen with him. Ahsoka Tano just said, “Coruscant.”

“Well, I knew _that_.” Wedge decided that his current position wasn’t actually comfortable for the situation at hand and leaned forward instead. Since he was about half the width of the chair’s intended inhabitant, he couldn’t put his elbows on the armrests without looking ridiculous, so he let his hands rest loosely between his thighs. It was still enough of a difference from military discipline that he thought he was getting the point across, even if he wasn’t sure that anyone else here cared.

Well, he thought Kallus cared, but that had more to do with his personality than the situation at hand. Being an Imperial would do that to you, which was why Wedge made himself point out that he wasn’t one anymore at every opportunity. The rebels on Yavin didn’t have many Imperial defectors; somehow it had gotten out that Wedge and Hobbie had both been at Skystrike Academy, which hadn’t endeared them to the other pilots there, most of whom had lost friends and comrades to graduates of that institution. Hobbie had been having more luck moving past it than Wedge had, for some reason. Kallus seemed to deal with it by simply not caring, or at least not letting anyone else know that it bothered him.

“What are we doing on Coruscant?” he clarified. “Rex said we’re going after Hera and the rest of the Spectres, but last I’d heard they were still on Lothal.”

“Rebel Intelligence intercepted an Imperial Navy report saying that two prisoners were being transported from Lothal to Coruscant,” Ahsoka said, nodding to Kallus, who just stared stonily back at her. She had a surprisingly light voice, somehow, one which didn’t quite match her fierce appearance. “Ezra Bridger and Kanan Jarrus. They can’t be allowed to remain in Emperor Palpatine’s hands.”

“All right,” Wedge said. “Why not? Aside from the fact that the Emperor’s a nasty piece of work and I wouldn’t trust him with a tooka kitten, let alone a friend of mine.”

Ahsoka ran a long-fingered orange hand over her chin, her gaze briefly turned inwards before she let it flick between the three men in the room. She glanced quickly at Rex, who nodded solemnly at her as if confirming something, and sighed. “How much do you know about Kanan and Ezra?”

Wedge glanced at Kallus, didn’t get any kind of response, and said, “I know they’re both Jedi, if that’s what you’re asking. There was a report a while back that Kanan had been killed, maybe Ezra too, but we were never able to confirm that. We never heard anything about Hera, Sabine, or Zeb, or anyone else from the squadron that went back there with Hera – with General Syndulla, I mean.” Since she seemed to be expecting something more, he added, “I guess they must not be dead if they’re being moved to Coruscant.”

“Oh, they’re dead,” Ahsoka said. “Or at least Kanan is. Ezra brought him back.”

There was a long moment of silence.

Kallus finally broke it by saying, “Preposterous.”

Ahsoka turned a faintly annoyed look on him and said, “The ways of the Force are –”

Kallus tilted his head slightly to the side, not breaking her gaze, and said, “I sincerely doubt that Jarrus was ever dead in the first place. I spent three years trying to kill him and never managed to do more than muss his hair.”

“And you’re just that good, hmm?” Rex said dryly.

“Before I was assigned to Lothal my record was exceptional.”

Wedge bit his lip on his automatic response to that. He was saved from coming up with a reply by Rex saying, “So if you couldn’t kill him, then no one else can either, is that right?”

Kallus made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “Pryce was a political appointee who got the governorship by doing a favor for Grand Moff Tarkin. Grand Admiral Thrawn is a more-than-competent naval officer, but hardly a trained intelligence operative.”

Rex eyed him. “Caught you, didn’t he?”

Kallus scowled, but was stopped from replying by Ahsoka raising her hands and saying, “You can believe what you want, but it is true. Palpatine can’t be allowed to have either of them.”

Wedge frowned at her. He had heard some of the old-timers at Chopper Base mention her from time to time, but he had never met her before and at the moment he was neither impressed nor planning to be. “How do you know that?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You’d be surprised at what I’d believe,” he said. “Look, lady, I’m all for a rescue mission, but –”

Something in Ahsoka’s face made him stop. He saw Kallus go still, the other man recognizing it at the same time as him.

“This _is_ a rescue mission, isn’t it?” Wedge said. “Not something else? Just what do you mean when you say that the Emperor can’t be allowed to have them?”

“Antilles –” Rex began.

Wedge got to his feet. He wasn’t a tall man; even without the added height of her montrals Ahsoka still topped him by several inches. But being on his feet made him feel better. “Ezra and Kanan saved my life when Sabine got me and Hobbie out of Skystrike. If you’re saying what I think you’re saying –”

“I don’t know you,” Ahsoka said. “So I don’t know what you think I’m saying. Rex vouched for you, but I’ll ask. Why are you here, Wedge Antilles?”

“To keep you from killing my friends, apparently,” Wedge said, and walked out of the room.

* * *

“Have you ever been to Coruscant before?”

Hera glanced over her shoulder at the sound of Sabine’s voice. They had stopped at the first likely spot for Sabine to change out of her hated Imperial flightsuit and she was back in her armor, looking much more comfortable and surprisingly shabby against the backdrop of Coruscant’s gleaming upper levels. Hera had gotten so used to her increasingly battered armor over the past five months that she hadn’t realized how badly the paint job had decayed. Usually Sabine repainted it long before it got to that point.

In answer to the question, she nodded and said, “Once, when I was little. My father was part of the Twi’lek delegation that came here after the Clone War to petition the Senate for aid. _Not_ his decision,” she added dryly. “My mother and I came with him.”

Zeb snorted softly. “How’d that work out?”

Hera arched her eyebrows at him. “How do you think Ryloth got a moff assigned to it almost before the Republic’s ashes were cold?”

Zeb and Sabine both winced.

Cham Syndulla hadn’t been happy about _any_ of that. He hadn’t wanted to come to Coruscant, he hadn’t wanted to beg the Senate and the Emperor for aid, and he hadn’t wanted the aid once it was offered. “Offered” at the point of a blaster, as he had put it, storming around their hotel suite while Hera had tried to ignore him in favor of the air traffic zipping through the sky lanes just outside their massive window. She had found the multitude of air speeders and swoop bikes far more interesting than politics at the time. She still did, to be honest, glancing up and to the right at the streams of traffic moving past them. Maybe they could –

“You?” Sabine asked Zeb, cutting off the half-formed thought.

To Hera’s surprise, he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. She thought he wasn’t going to go on, but after he added awkwardly, “The Royal Family came here once, back before –” His gaze went distant, turned up towards the air traffic but without seeing it. “I was with them.”

Sabine shifted uneasily, her helmet concealing her expression. “I won an award,” she offered hastily, as if to erase the unwanted memory. “Back when I was at the Imperial Academy. But I only saw part of the Palace, not anything else.”

Zeb squinted at her thoughtfully. “Didn’t your family get that Darksaber thing from the Jedi Temple?”

Sabine tilted her head at him. “Yeah, about a thousand years ago. And it wasn’t _my_ family, it was someone from my House.”

“So you don’t have the plans.”

“So I don’t have the plans.”

Hera rubbed at her forehead. The Imperial Palace was a distant, imposing shape that was, from their current position, framed by two towering skyscrapers. It wasn’t quite as far away as it looked, but for all of Hera’s ideas of how to possibly get inside it might as well have been on Ryloth.

Ryloth would have been more helpful. Hera knew how to get into buildings on Ryloth.

The TIE Strikers that had chased their TIE hadn’t swung back around for them, either because they had been unable to track where Hera and the others had bailed out or because they had missed that event entirely and assumed that they had gone down with the ship. That was about their only advantage at the moment, though Hera didn’t want to put any money on that lasting. If Coruscant was anything like the other occupied planets she had been on, then someone would have reported their inglorious arrival on the walkway to the nearest Imperial authorities. The _Chimaera_ had presumably already reported their escape to Grand Admiral Thrawn, or possibly to the Admiralty or even the Palace itself.

Sabine came up beside her, the rangefinder on her helmet lowered across her visor. Hera leaned over to look through it, closing one eye as she did so.

The Empire had done what it could to erase the fact that the Palace had previously been the Jedi Temple, though there were still archive holograms available on the HoloNet if you knew where to look. Because of them, Hera knew that twenty years ago there had been massive statues outside the Temple which had since been replaced by pillars with the Imperial banner hung over them. Elaborate friezes had been removed, leaving behind bare walls only occasionally covered up by more banners. Every building surrounding it had been torn down, leaving various courtyards large enough to serve as landing platforms – which some of them were, Hera noticed, observing the Lambda shuttles and TIE Strikers docked there. The big courtyard directly opposite her, opening onto the main palace doors, could have served to park a star destroyer. Through the magnification on Sabine’s rangefinder, Hera could just make out the distant shapes of white-armored stormtroopers and red-clad Imperial Guards moving back and forth on patrol across the front of the Palace and on the upper levels of the massive building. There was no way to approach it without being immediately spotted, even for four individuals approaching on foot. Sabine, approaching with her jetpack, would probably be spotted just as easily.

“Kanan told me that there were two break-ins when he was a padawan there,” Hera told Sabine and Zeb; Chopper had already heard the story. “One was a bounty hunter who wanted to steal from the Temple, the other a Separatist terrorist. Both came in through the roof.”

“So I’m guessing whatever holes they exploited have been sealed,” Sabine said dryly. She lifted her rangefinder again and settled back, her attention still on the distant Palace. “And the Jedi Temple was a lot more approachable than the Imperial Palace is, since I don’t think they were as paranoid as Palpatine is.”

“Or they’d still be around,” Zeb put in.

“Some of them _are_ still alive,” Hera said, more sharply than she had meant.

Zeb only flicked an ear. “Too bad they’re not the ones calling the shots on security, then.”

Hera looked back at the Palace. They might be able to steal a TIE Striker or a Lambda somewhere and approach that way, but she suspected that the Imperial Palace had landing protocols that would make it impossible for them to reach the Palace airspace without being shot down no matter what ship they were flying. There was no way that they could make it across the kilometer-wide expanse of duracrete between the nearest skyscrapers and the Palace itself without being seen.

“What about under?” she asked Sabine and Zeb. “They must have some kind of plumbing.”

“ _Sewers_ –” Zeb began with feeling. “Crawling through Palpatine’s –”

“Stop before you finish that sentence,” Sabine advised him hastily. She lowered her viewfinder again and regarded the Palace thoughtfully. “That might be a better bet, though it’s possible that the Palace might go all the way down to the planet’s surface.” She thought about it. “From what I’ve heard about Coruscant, though, I don’t think the plumbing for this part of it _could_ , though, not the way that the rest of the city is built.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Hera said. “Chop, locate the nearest descent corridor.”

The droid made his opinion of a possible sewer approach known.

“Oh, come on!” Zeb protested. “You don’t even have a sense of smell!”

“Sometimes I think you don’t, either,” Sabine muttered. “It would explain a lot.”

Chopper snickered, but activated his holoprojector to give them a map view of the nearest block or so, displaying a kilometer around their current location in all directions – including up _and_ down. It was a more disconcerting experience than Hera had expected, though Twi’leks were used to thinking of such things; Lessu and most of the clan heartlands all had cities, villages, and villas sunk deep into the planet’s bedrock, in some cases hollowing out entire mountains the way Lessu and Hera’s childhood home in the Tann Province had done. But it had been a long time since Hera had had to think that way.

“Here.” Sabine stabbed a finger into the hologram, indicating the corridor that ran through the center of the image. Hera eyed it, trying to estimate its size based on the buildings surrounding it – more than large enough for her to bring the _Ghost_ down, had she been flying the ship, and still have room for a few more light freighters and a flight of A-wings before any of them even had to worry about scraping their paint. The scale of it boggled her mind.

Sabine traced her finger down the corridor, which Chopper obligingly enlarged for her, until she tapped what looked like a dark spot on the wall. “I _think_ this is the entrance to a drainage pipe,” she said. “That should get us into the system, at least. If the Palace is connected to the main system, we should be able to get in through there.”

“What if it isn’t?” Zeb demanded, eyeing the hologram with distaste.

Sabine threw up her hands. “Do you have any better ideas?”

Hera studied the hologram as Zeb grumbled a negative. “There must be some kind of service station in there somewhere that will have a termanl where you or Chopper can slice in and get plans of the entire system,” she said. “It might not be possible to go directly from this pipeline to the Palace, but the waste from the Palace has to go somewhere. And if nothing else, it will get us closer.”

“There are probably security droids down there,” Sabine warned. “Or stormtroopers.”

Zeb grinned suddenly, hefting his bo-rifle. “Good.”

Chopper shut off the hologram as Hera straightened up again. She pressed a hand to the small of her back, wincing a little, and Sabine and Zeb both turned towards her with identical worried expressions.

“I’m fine,” Hera assured them, resisting the urge to smile. “Just a little sore.” Fortunately Twi’leks didn’t get morning sickness the way that some humans did. Hera didn’t think she could get used to the changes in her body, though.

“If you’re sure,” Sabine said, still watching her. “Uh – do you need to stop for lunch or something?”

Zeb frowned at her. “We have money?”

“I know how to pick pockets,” Sabine muttered.

“Too bad the kid’s not here,” Zeb said, looking dubious at this claim.

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point of us being here in the first place –”

“We don’t have time for that,” Hera told them, though she appreciated the thought. Anything could happen inside the Imperial Palace, and she didn’t know how long it would take them to find a way inside, if they even could.

 _They won’t kill him_ , she told herself firmly. Palpatine wanted the secret of how Ezra had brought Kanan back too badly to kill either of them on a whim. The Emperor would keep them both alive until he had extracted every possible shred of information from them. Hera knew Kanan and Ezra. They wouldn’t break easily, but that didn’t mean she wanted to leave them there for even a minute longer than she had to.

She cast a last anxious glance in the direction of the Imperial Palace, at the five spires that rose towards the heavens and marked out the place where the defenders of the Old Republic had died. _I’m coming_ , she promised silently. _Wait for me, love._

* * *

The shuttle ride down to the planet was short and uneventful, but there was nothing that could have alleviated Kanan’s growing unease.

It might have been completely natural, since this was only saved from being the worst situation he had ever been in by the fact that barely thirty hours ago he had been standing on top of a fuel canister about to blow himself to smithereens. But Kanan had the distinct sensation that the feeling was coming from outside himself, not within, and that it was, somehow, familiar. By the time the shuttle set down somewhere on Coruscant, Kanan was breathing in hard, panting gasps, his heart hammering in his chest. He could feel the stormtroopers on either side looking at him, aware of his reaction, but mostly uninterested.

He stood up as they unstrapped him from the harness and lifted him to his feet. Ezra managed to get beside him, whispering, “Kanan, it – it feels wrong.”

“Yeah.”

“Kanan –” He broke off as one of the stormtroopers cuffed him across the back of his head, hissing through his teeth in startled pain.

Kanan jerked in reaction, his manacled hands balling into fists, but there was nothing he could do at the moment. He let the stormtroopers lead him out of the shuttle, even though his whole body was braced in protest, only too aware of where they were going, what had happened there, and who – or _what_ – was in all likelihood waiting for them.

There were guards on the landing platform – no, hangar bay; the structure was protected from the wind outside, the omnipresent sound of air traffic muted by the surrounding walls. It was hard for him to make out details through the Force, hard the way it had been those first few awful months after Malachor when he had been torn between trying to dredge up skills unused since his childhood and collapsing into despair.

“They’re Imperial Guards,” Ezra said to him, low-voiced. “Or maybe – at least I think they are. I’ve only ever seen them on the HoloNet, during those speeches the Emperor makes.”

He was probably right, which didn’t make Kanan feel any better. He nodded a little in response and felt the slight warmth of Ezra’s relief at getting a reaction from him. It was taking almost all of Kanan’s concentration just to walk in a straight line, though that was helped by the stormtrooper who had a firm grip on his elbow, like the trooper wasn’t certain whether or not the blind man could stay on his feet without assistance. At the moment Kanan wasn’t certain he wasn’t wrong.

He heard rather than sensed the Imperial Guards come up to meet them, their tread on the hangar floor a little lighter than that of the stormtroopers. Ezra shifted uneasily, his attention turning to Kanan for advice on what to do, but Kanan had, quite literally, no idea.

“You may return to your ship,” one of the Guards said to the naval officer, who had come down the ramp to join them. Kanan thought he might have made some gesture as well, because he was aware of Governor Pryce and the minister being escorted away across the hangar; presumably they would be dealt with later.

Imperial Guards fell in on either side of Kanan and Ezra, as well as behind and ahead of them. None of them touched Kanan, for which he was profoundly grateful; he concentrated on the sound of footsteps in front of him, parsing the slight differences in tread between the guards surrounding them as they made their way across the hangar. After a few moments it didn’t take as much of his concentration anymore, and he let his awareness cautiously spread outwards as much as he felt able to.

He knew where they were.

His mouth went dry. He felt the sharp stab of Ezra’s attention as he registered Kanan’s alarm; he took a quick step closer to Kanan until he could bump his shoulder companionably against Kanan’s arm, doing his best to steady him. Kanan felt several of the Guards look over, wary at this, but no one moved to separate them.

Doors slid smoothly open in front of them and Kanan hesitated even as the Imperial Guards moved forwards. Since he had no doubt that they were fully capable of forcing him to move, he went with them, but his whole body – his whole self – flinched away from what was waiting for him inside those doors. Beside him, Ezra’s breath was coming in fast, shallow gasps, his teeth chattering together because he had started shaking.

He whispered, “Kanan –”

 _It’s all right_ , he wanted to say, but the lie stilled on his tongue. He couldn’t bring himself to offer up an empty platitude, not when Ezra was smart enough to know better, not when he was Jedi enough to sense what lay all around them.

He was braced for some sort of physical reaction as they passed from the hangar into the Imperial Palace proper, but there was nothing, and Kanan allowed himself to feel a faint trickle of relief. It wouldn’t last, he knew, but for the moment it was preferable to be proven wrong.

His boot heels clicked softly against the marble floors as they made their way deeper into the Palace. Even after almost two decades, Kanan’s body knew the way, his awareness picking up familiar corridors as they passed by them or parallel to them, places where he had spent time in classes or training or just running around the Temple the way all the younglings had done. He kept trying to tell himself that it wasn’t the Jedi Temple anymore, not really, that the Temple had burned along with the Jedi Order eighteen years ago, but he couldn’t make himself believe it. His instincts knew better.

The Palace…recognized him.

The haze of the dark side that seemed to close in around him made him more than usually careful about where he put his feet, paying attention to every step because he wasn’t entirely certain that what he was sensing through the Force was accurate. Even through that, he felt the tendrils of awareness, the semi-sentience of the Temple – the _Palace_ – that ten thousand generations and millennia of occupation by the Jedi had raised in what had once been nothing more than ordinary wood and stone. Until he had gone on campaign with Depa Billaba, Kanan had never known that that wasn’t normal, that every structure didn’t have its own distinct personality and presence in the Force. Any site occupied by Force-users, Jedi or Sith or anyone else, developed that kind of near-sentience. He had felt it on Malachor, stagnant and drowsing after centuries of abandonment but malignant all the same, dragged abruptly out of its bitter hibernation when Ezra and Maul had entered the temple there. Dathomir had been, in its own way, worse. Dathomir… _whispered_ , as though the Nightsisters had raised in it not a single presence but a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, all of them tucked inside the walls of the old temple site as they waited for their clan to be reborn.

The Imperial Palace was the worst.

Kanan felt it like another presence, like someone standing just at his shoulder, on the other side of him from Ezra. It was the Temple but not the Temple, reaching out to him with curious familiarity, sliding into the nooks and crannies of his mind that had once let him run the halls of this building blindfolded, aware of nothing but the breathtaking clarity of the Force. And it was the Temple but not the Temple, hung all over in funeral shrouds, with the stench of rot still on it, with the chill of the grave that slid into his veins and said, _I’ve been waiting for you._

And then, all at once, not the iciness of the grave, but the blazing heat of the pyre.

Kanan threw himself sideways with a yell, bowling over Ezra so that they both went sprawling onto the floor. The cool marble shocked him; Kanan was burning up, skin charring, flesh melting, bones cracking in consuming heat, the Force lost to him in an instant of unimaginable agony –

“Kanan!” Ezra wailed, grabbing at him with manacled hands. “Kanan!”

For an instant, Kanan thought that Ezra was burning too, that he had failed here at the bitter end. He felt the flames jump from his flesh to Ezra’s, racing up his arms, following the pattern scarred into his flesh as they devoured him, burning him up from the outside in and the inside out all at once, so that a skeleton with a blackened, cracked skull and blood red kyber crystals where its eyes should have been grinned down at him, bony fingers clutching at him before the fire ate him up and he collapsed into fine ash across Kanan’s body –

“Kanan!”

All at once he was on his back on the marble floor.

He felt heat briefly beneath his shoulders, flames licking playfully at the back of his neck and charring his boot heels; smelled, for an instant, the acrid scent of burning hair. Then it was all gone, the dark side of the Force leaving him with the memory like a lover’s kiss.

Kanan turned his face down against the floor, shuddering. The marble was cool against his cheek, soothing for an instant before Kanan remembered how many of his people had died here – right here, maybe.

“Kanan?” Ezra said again, his voice shaky but a little less frightened now.

“I’m all right,” Kanan forced himself to say. He didn’t know how much of that Ezra had felt. Maybe he hadn’t felt any of it at all; maybe that thing inside him, the thing that had marked his hands, had protected him from it. That might be a good thing.

Two of the Imperial Guards came over to haul them both to their feet. Kanan couldn’t sense surprise from them, just vague impatience, as though they dealt with Jedi losing their minds in the Palace every day. Kanan didn’t know how many others there had been, especially in recent years, but he doubted that he was the first. He thought he would probably be the last.

Ezra clung determinedly to his elbow rather than allow the Guards to hurry them along. “Are you all right?” he demanded. “What – what was that?”

“I’m fine,” Kanan said. His voice came out as little more than a rasp, as though he had been inhaling smoke. He coughed and tried again, “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Well, I feel fine.”

One of the Imperial Guards pushed impatiently at his shoulder, making Kanan stumble and Ezra hiss like an affronted Loth-cat. “Come on,” Kanan told him wearily, “I think we have a meeting we’re late for.”

Ezra grumbled bitterly under his breath, something Kanan decided he didn’t want to listen to too closely. There would be time for that later, he hoped.

It was easier to bear the Palace now as they passed through the corridors. Kanan could still feel it there, but it was as if something about the experience had – had translated the Temple into the Palace, had made it something that he was capable of understanding. Kanan didn’t like that fact, and he also didn’t like the fact that he had no way of knowing if it was because of what he was or because of what had happened to him. He hoped Ezra didn’t know, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that the thing inside him made certain that he did.

Ezra shifted his shoulders uneasily, like he was aware of what Kanan was thinking, but he didn’t say anything. He finally released Kanan as the Imperial Guards hurried them along deeper into the Imperial Palace.

They weren’t taking any of the main corridors, which Kanan supposed were occupied by servants and courtiers and whoever else the Emperor had decided to fill the place with. Kanan recognized the back corridors they were taking, his mind tracing out the pathways to the exits. Even after all this time he thought he could still manage it, assuming that the Emperor hadn’t completely gutted the place.

They had to take a turbolift up and Kanan bit his lip as they ascended, his nerves prickling. He knew where they were and where they were going. He knew _exactly_ where they were going.

The turbolift car stopped. Kanan hesitated even as the doors slid open in front of him, but the Imperial Guards surrounding him made it impossible to do anything except go forwards. Ezra was practically glued to his side, shivering all over.

Halfway down the length of the room, one of the Imperial Guards kicked Kanan’s knees out from beneath him. He went down hard, Ezra beside him, and barely managed to catch himself with his hands against the floor.

“Well, well, well,” said Emperor Palpatine, “Caleb Dume and Ezra Bridger. The last of the Jedi.”

* * *

Rex found her in the cockpit not long after Wedge Antilles had stormed out of the aborted meeting.

Ahsoka heard the door open behind her, but didn’t bother to look back, just stayed where she was. She was seated cross-legged in the pilot’s chair, staring out at the odd bluish shapes of hyperspace and trying to find some kind of pattern in them. No one ever had as best she knew; even after millennia of using it to travel between worlds, hyperspace was still a mystery, even to the Jedi.

“Well, you certainly put the tooka in among the nunas,” Rex said. He caught the back of the co-pilot’s chair in one hand and turned it to face her before dropping into it.

Ahsoka hid her automatic wince. She had started to take that seat when she had come in, not wanting to deal with the tiny indignity that taking Hera’s chair for any purpose other than flying would have been, but the co-pilot’s chair was Kanan’s. Her oversensitive nerves had immediately picked up the resonance of his long hours in that seat over the course of years. In her current state of mind, she hadn’t wanted to deal with it.

“That’s not how I would have put it,” she said. She braced a hand against the dashboard to turn her chair to face him, then rubbed her palm over her aching montrals. She just wanted to sleep. She couldn’t remember the last time she had done so, not more than a snatched hour here and there. Before they had gone to Malachor, most likely.

 _Two years ago_ , she thought, and barely suppressed her shudder.

Rex eyed her. It occurred to Ahsoka that he had done exactly what he would have done – and had done – twenty years ago during the Clone Wars: left her alone to brood, then come to find her and shake her out of it so that they could go back to whatever urgent mission they were on.

“Well?” he asked. “Was Wedge right? Alek’s still back there talking him down and I’m not even sure he believes what he’s saying – not that he’s much of a talker in the first place, mind.”

Ahsoka eyed him, considering the two men she only barely knew. “Captain Kallus is calming Lieutenant Antilles down?” she asked finally.

Rex snorted. “Well, Alek used to be ISB and his idea of calming someone down is shooting them until they stop twitching, so that’s not exactly how I’d put it.”

“I haven’t heard shooting.”

“Yeah, that’s why I said he was talking him down, not calming him down.” He quirked a heavy eyebrow at her, offering to share the joke; Ahsoka couldn’t bring herself to do more than smile slightly for an instant before the expression slid away.

She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to rub out some of her weariness. “It isn’t like that – like what Lieutenant Antilles suggested I was planning,” she said finally, aware that Rex had been working much more closely with Kanan and Ezra than she ever had. The realization gave her a slight twinge, as if something had been taken from her. Ahsoka shoved it down with effort, since it wasn’t as though she had seen Rex more than a handful of times in the fifteen years prior to that either. But the knowledge of those missing two years left her feeling hollow.

“Then what is it like?”

There was no accusation in Rex’s voice, just calm curiosity, and that made her feel better. Ahsoka let her hands drop back to her lap, pulling absently at the pointed tip of her soft suede gauntlets where they came up over the backs of her hands, fingertips searching for and not finding any loose threads. She smoothed the fabric out as she thought, searching for the right words and trusting that Rex wasn’t going to rush her.

“I don’t know what Ezra did,” she said finally. “That’s the thing, Rex – I don’t know what Ezra did. I don’t even know for sure that it _is_ Ezra, since it’s not like we can take the Empire’s word for it, and I don’t know that it’s really Kanan he brought back either, even if it is him.”

Rex’s brows knit. “What do you mean?”

Ahsoka sighed. “It’s hard to explain,” she said after a moment’s thought. She had already tried to explain it to Rex once when they were on their way back to Yavin from Malachor, but she had been exhausted and a little delirious from the combination of sleeplessness, hunger, and adrenaline, not to mention the overwhelming sense of the dark side that hung over the shattered remains of the Sith temple. She wasn’t even certain she had been speaking in coherent sentences by that point, and Rex had mostly been too relieved to see her alive to ask questions at the time.

She raised her hands and looked at them again, not sure what she was searching for. There was nothing new – no sign of the passage of time, no bruising or scarring from pushing back against the Emperor’s ravenous grasp into the World Between Worlds, just the familiar lightsaber calluses and the scar at the base of her left palm that she had gotten during her first Gathering on Illum all those years ago. Sighing, Ahsoka closed her unmarked hands into fists and rested them on her knees.

“I don’t know exactly what happened on Lothal,” she said slowly. “Ezra did something – opened a gate, I think. A doorway. To a – a – I suppose you might call it a station, of sorts, full of many doorways.”

Rex leaned forward, his frown deepening. “Doorways to where?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Ahsoka said simply. “Everywhere – every _when_ , maybe.” She swallowed. “Maybe – more than that, too. I don’t know, Rex. I just don’t know, and that scares me. Ezra is strong in the Force, but he’s not like me or Kanan – he’s not like Obi-Wan or A –” Her voice hitched; she couldn’t say his name. Her throat worked silently for a few moments as she tried to move past that and couldn’t, her eyes burning with tears.

Rex leaned forwards and took her hands in his, his grip warm and comforting.

Ahsoka smiled weakly at him and made herself go on after a moment. “Ezra doesn’t – he doesn’t think the same way that I do or Kanan did, the way someone raised in the Temple would.”

“I’ve noticed that,” Rex said, and Ahsoka felt a surge of gratitude. She squeezed his hands, relieved beyond speaking that even if the Jedi were dead and gone, there was at least one person left in the galaxy that remembered what it was to be a Jedi, that remembered what it was to live with them day-in and day-out for years.

“I want to say that Ezra would never do anything that might put the galaxy at risk – not just the Rebellion, Rex, but the galaxy. Everything we are, everything we could be – I’m not sure, but I think that was what was in that place. I think what was behind all those doors was – was _possibility_. But I don’t know,” Ahsoka said, her voice breaking with frustration. “I wouldn’t have said it to Bail and Mon Mothma if I didn’t think I was right, but I don’t know. It’s not something I ever learned about in the Temple, but there are so many things that the Jedi knew and never taught. There were so many secrets that the Order kept hidden and not just for the sake of keeping secrets, but because the Force –”

She freed her hands from Rex’s and held them out, palm up. “The Force holds the galaxy together,” she said, dipping one hand briefly, then lifting the other, “but that doesn’t mean it can’t destroy it just as easily.”

She thought about Mortis, about the world crumbling around them with the deaths of its guardians, and shuddered.

“I don’t know what Ezra did,” she said again. “I don’t know what door he opened. I want to believe that he wouldn’t have done something like this. I wouldn’t. Kanan wouldn’t. Obi-Wan wouldn’t. Ana – no Jedi of the Republic would have. But Ezra might have just because he didn’t know any better. And if he opened a door – even if he did it by accident – who knows what could have come through?”

She looked at her hands again, then dropped them to her lap, fisting them against her knees. “I want this to be what it looks like,” she said. “You know I do, Rex.”

He nodded slowly. “What about you?” he asked, his voice rough.

Ahsoka flexed her hands. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know. But the only thing I can do right now is find them, so that’s what I’m going to do, and I – _we_ – will go from there.” She glanced out the viewport again, at the mystery of hyperspace just beyond them, then looked back at her friend. “We are the Force made flesh,” she told him. “But the flesh is so fragile. And the Force is not always with us.”

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to Stella, Kablob, and Snacky for beta services, hand-holding, and emotional support.
> 
> For new readers, I do daily progress reports over on Tumblr, under the tag "[daily fic snippet](http://bedlamsbard.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-fic-snippet)," if you want to keep track of what I'm working on or get a hint of what's happening in the next chapter or two. I am currently working two chapters ahead.


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